The Jazz Plaza Festival began on January 26 simultaneously in three cities: Havana, Villa Clara and Santiago de Cuba.
In the capital, the event program offered three presentations on its first day. Each of them totally remarkable and with a common thread: pay taxes. The festival has several dedications this year and two of them were skipped on this initial day.
Adding to childhood
The 35 years of the Colmenita were celebrated with the idea that the Children’s Theater Company was the first presence of art made for childhoods participating in the Jazz Plaza.
In turn, the Colmenita chose to create a show that brought to the children’s audience the opportunity of the discovery, and not the occasion of the reunion, with the music of Irakere.
Taking as theatrical reason the story of Gold rich and the three bearsthe bees repeated a style that has already worked with tributes to the Van Van or The Beatles, and created their Ricitos Valdés and the three bears in the Irakere forest They took to the stage on Saturday, January 25 and Sunday 26 at the Karl Marx Theater.
“We have lived a giant party, we have made a hug, a big kiss for the best of Cuban music. With Irakere we feel that we have touched the roof, ”says Carlos Alberto Cremata, director of La Colmenita.
The show had among its guests the founders and former members of Irakere, such as drummer Enrique Plá, bassist Jorge Reyes, saxophonists César López and German Velazco, and the flutist Orlando Valle “Maraca”.
In addition, he told the voices of the company’s small members with great Cuban singers such as Mandy Cantero, Alain Pérez and Mayito Rivera; and lent all the stage and its instruments to the showman from Cuba, Bobby Carcassés, the creator of the Jazz Plaza Festival.
Just when the last function ended and the curtain fell, it seemed that the great musical explosion really began.
“A Cuban party was formed here, and we are going to continue because we are children, what the party like is the party,” said Cremata.
Frank Fernández: 80 years
Another of the festival’s dedications was for the 80 years of life and 65 artistic career of the pianist Frank Fernández, and that was the concert that closed the first night of the event, in a Avellaneda room of the National Theater in Cuba totally full.
The artist himself explained on stage that the presentation was conceived with a repertoire that included many of his compositions, but also works that are his favorites of very diverse authors such as Alfred Thompson, Giacomo Puccini, Bill Evans, José White, Ernesto Lecuona, María Teresa Vera and Atahualpa Yupanki.
Frank was the protagonist in entertainment and on stage, but he was not alone. Digna War and National Choir of Cuba, Cuban Sax Quintet, the tenor Eugenio Hernández, Javier Millet and the Chamber Orchestra, the percussionist Jesús Estrada, the dolls of Matanzas, the singers María Victoria Rodríguez and Zulema Iglesias, the pianists Nachito Herrera and Rodrigo Garcia, the little violinist of only 13 years Víctor Núñez and Quenista Rodrigo Sosa accompanied him on some songs and assumed others themselves.
“That affection of the Cuban people with me, the same if I play Beethoven as if I play a rumba with the killing dolls, that is priceless, it is invaluable and here they have me until the last day of my life,” the pianist still told us in The stage, a few minutes after the concert ended.
Rolando Luna and the Danzones
Rolando Luna is considered by many the best pianist of his generation and is one of the great stars of Cuban music formed in the Jazz Plaza, winner in the late 90s of the Jojazz award, that quarry event that was sadly lost. Luna decided this time to dedicate her concert to a specific genre.
“Tribute to the danzón because I am admirer of my roots, of those pianists of our national dance, and I owe a lot to those composers who enhanced those dancers that I touched. In addition, these specific ones tell them super danzones, that is, that the danzón that is the great work of music, because it is the only genre that can cover all genres in one, and they still tell them super dance because they have an extra ”, Explains Rolando Luna about the reasons for this concert and the selection of his repertoire.
The National Symphony Orchestra of Cuba, this time led by the National Music Award Joaquín Betancourt, accompanied the pianist, adding other color notes with the presence and talent of Felipe Cabrera in the double bass, Yaroldy Abreu in the percussion, Barbarito Torres in The Laud, Carlos Sarduy in the trumpet and the singers Annys Batista and Olvido Ruiz Castellanos.
“I have known Rolando almost since he graduated from the School of Music and I was from the first musicians who discovered his talent and called him to record, to integrate some popular groups, so he honors me a lot that he has designated me to do this I work, a beautiful project in which I put all my heart, ”says Joaquín Betancourt, with that joy that also comes from the proud teacher.
