Chucho Valdés: Irakere 50
With Special Guest.S Paquito D'Rivera, Arturo Sandoval, Luis Enrique and Francisco Céspedes
For the first time in over 40 years, Valdés will be joined on stage by Paquito D’ Rivera and Arturo Sandoval along with special guests Luis Enrique and Francisco Céspedes and accompanied by bassist José A. Gola, drummer Horacio Hernandez, percussionist Roberto Jr. Vizcaino Torre, trumpeters Eddy de Armas Jr. and Osvaldo Fleites, saxophonists Carlos Averhoff Jr. and Luis Beltrán and vocalist Ramón Alvarez.

Chucho Valdes
Fresh off the world premiere of his epic work La Creación at the Arsht Center in 2021, Cuban pianist and composer Chucho Valdés returns to commemorate 50 years of Irakere, the legendary Afro-Cuban jazz band he founded that changed the face of Latin music forever.
With its audacious mix of Afro-Cuban ritual music, Cuban dance music, jazz, classical music and rock, Irakere marked a before and after in Latin jazz. The group’s self-titled debut recording in the United States won a Grammy as Best Latin Recording in 1979. In 2015, Valdés celebrated Irakere’s 40th anniversary with a world tour. Tribute to Irakere: Live at Marciac, which captured a performance on that tour, won a Grammy for Best Latin Jazz Album in 2016.
For the first time in over 40 years, Valdés will be joined on stage by Paquito D’ Rivera and Arturo Sandoval along with special guests Luis Enrique and Francisco Céspedes and accompanied by bassist José A. Gola, drummer Horacio Hernandez, percussionist Roberto Jr. Vizcaino Torre, trumpeters Eddy de Armas Jr. and Osvaldo Fleites, saxophonists Carlos Averhoff Jr. and Luis Beltrán and vocalist Ramón Alvarez.
Photo credit: Daniel Azoulay Studio

Cuban pianist, composer, and arranger Chucho Valdés is the most influential figure in modern Afro-Cuban jazz. In a career spanning more than 60 years, both as a solo artist and bandleader, Mr. Valdés has distilled elements of the Afro-Cuban music tradition, jazz, classical music, rock, and more, into a deeply personal style.
Winner of seven GRAMMY® and five Latin GRAMMY® Awards, Mr. Valdés, received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Latin Academy of Recording Arts & Science last year and was also inducted into the Latin Songwriters Hall of Fame.  
Mr. Valdés celebrated his 80th birthday on October 9, 2021, completing La Creación (The Creation), a three-movement suite for a small ensemble, voices, and a big band. The piece, the most ambitious work of his career, tells the history of Creation according to the Regla de Ocha, the Afro-Cuban religion known as Santería.
The Creation was a commission of the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC, the Chicago Symphony Center, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association. It had its world premiere on November 5, 2021, at the Adrienne Arsht Center. Performances followed in several U.S. cities, including Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City, the Detroit Jazz Festival in Detroit, MI, and the Monterey Jazz Festival, in Monterey, CA. In Europe, the tour began at the Philharmonie in Paris and included performances in Berlin, London, Hamburg, Lyon, and Barcelona (Mr. Valdés is the godfather of the International Jazz Festival).
Another significant recent development was the long-awaited reunion with his old friend and co-conspirator in many musical adventures, the extraordinary clarinetist, saxophonist, and composer Paquito D'Rivera. They have rarely played together for the past 40 years, and since their reunion, they have wasted no time. In January 2022, they recorded an album entitled I Missed You Too, and embarked on a tour with their Reunion Sextet that took them to Europe and the United States.
Born in a family of musicians in Quivicán, Havana province, Cuba, on October 9, 1941, Dionisio Jesús "Chucho" Valdés Rodríguez, has distilled elements of the Afro-Cuban music tradition, jazz, classical music, and rock into an organic, deeply personal style.
His first teacher was his father, the pianist, composer, and bandleader Ramón "Bebo" Valdés. By the age of three, Mr. Valdés was already playing on the piano melodies he heard on the radio -- using both hands and on any key. He began taking lessons on piano, theory, and solfege at the age of five. He continued his formal musical education at the Conservatorio Municipal de Música de la Habana, from which he graduated at 14.  A year later, Mr. Valdés formed his first jazz trio. In 1959, he debuted professionally with the band Sabor de Cuba. The ensemble, directed by his father, is widely considered one of the great orchestras in modern Cuban music.
Fittingly, Mr. Valdés made his early mark as the founder, pianist, and leading composer and arranger of another landmark ensemble: the small big band Irakere (1973-2005). With its audacious mix of Afro-Cuban ritual music, Cuban dance music, jazz, classical music, and rock, Irakere marked a before and after in Latin jazz. Irakere's self-titled debut recording in the United States won a Grammy as Best Latin Recording in 1979. 
While he remained with Irakere until 2005, Mr. Valdés launched a parallel career in 1998 both as a solo performer and a small-group leader. It marked the beginning of an enormously fruitful period highlighted by albums such as Solo Piano (Blue Note, 1991), Solo: Live in New York (Blue Note, 2001), as well as quartet recordings such as Bele Bele en La Habana (Blue Note, 1998), Briyumba Palo Congo (Blue Note, 1999), New Conceptions (Blue Note, 2003), and Live at the Village Vanguard (Blue Note, 2000), which won a Grammy for Best Latin Jazz Album.
After leaving Irakere, Mr. Valdés also won Grammys for Juntos Para Siempre (Calle 54, 2007), the duet recording with his father, Bebo; and, Chucho's Steps (Comanche, 2010), which introduced his new group, the Afro-Cuban Messengers.
But such success didn't mean forgetting past achievements. In 2015, Mr. Valdés celebrated the 40thanniversary of the birth of Irakere, his iconic band, with a world tour. Tribute to Irakere: Live at Marciac  (Jazz Village / Comanche Music), which captured a performance on that tour, won a Grammy for the Best Latin Jazz Album in 2016. He also won a Latin Grammy as Best Latin Jazz album for Jazz Batá 2, in which he revisited a revolutionary idea Mr. Valdés first recorded in 1972: a piano jazz trio featuring batá drums.
In 2022, Chucho Valdés won a Grammy and a Latin Grammy for Mirror Mirror, an album of duets by pianist and singer Eliane Elias with Mr. Valdés and the great late pianist Chick Corea.
Jan 2023


Arturo Sandoval
Arturo Sandoval is one of the most brilliant, multifaceted and renowned musicians of our time! Although he is an acknowledged virtuoso of jazz trumpet and flugelhorn, he is just as dynamic and vivacious on the piano, timbales, vocals and keyboard. He delights in presenting a diverse and exhilarating show featuring Afro-Cuban Jazz, Be Bop, straight ahead Jazz and so much more.
He is by far, one of the world’s foremost entertainers, having been seen by millions performing live at the Oscars, the Grammys, at the White House, and the industry’s most esteemed Performing Arts Centers and Festivals.
Sandoval is a celebrated classical artist as well as composer who has been awarded 10 Grammy Awards, 6 Billboard Awards, an Emmy, the Hispanic Heritage Award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Obama, and was recently honored with a Doctorate in Fine Arts from the prestigious Notre-Dame University.

Paquito D'Rivera

Biography
Paquito D’Rivera has won a combined 16 Grammy and Latin Grammy Awards (5 Grammy and 11 Latin Grammys). He is celebrated both for his artistry in Latin jazz and his achievements as a classical composer.
Born in Havana, Cuba, he performed at age 10 with the National Theater Orchestra, studied at the Havana Conservatory of Music, and at 17, became a featured soloist with the Cuban National Symphony. As a founding member of the Orquesta Cubana de Musica Moderna, he directed that group for two years, while at the same time playing both the clarinet and saxophone with the Cuban National Symphony Orchestra. He eventually went on to premiere several works by notable Cuban composers with the same orchestra. Additionally, he was a founding member and co-director of the innovative musical ensemble Irakere. With its explosive mixture of jazz, rock, classical and traditional Cuban music never before heard, Irakere toured extensively throughout America and Europe, received several GRAMMY nominations (1979, 1980), and a GRAMMY (1979).
His numerous recordings include more than 30 solo albums. In 1988, he was a founding member of the United Nation Orchestra, a 15-piece ensemble organized by Dizzy Gillespie to showcase the fusion of Latin and Caribbean influences with jazz. D’Rivera continues to appear as guest conductor. A GRAMMY was awarded the United Nation Orchestra in 1991, the same year D’Rivera received a Lifetime Achievement Award from Carnegie Hall for his contributions to Latin music. Additionally, D’Rivera’s highly acclaimed ensembles- the Chamber Jazz Ensemble, the Paquito D’Rivera Big Band, and the Paquito D’Rivera Quintet are in great demand world wide.
While Paquito D’Rivera’s discography reflects a dedication and enthusiasm for Jazz, Bebop and Latin music, his contributions to classical music are impressive. They include solo performances with the London Philharmonic, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra, the Baltimore Symphony, the Florida Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Brooklyn Philharmonic. He has also performed with the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra, the Costa Rica National Symphony, the Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra, the Bronx Arts Ensemble, a