Twelve years ago, I wrote about Orlando “Maraca” Valle as the Great White Hope of the Cuban flute. Today, he is its finest exponent, and Live At The Grand Theater of Havana is the album he was born to make.
Maraca is a man of many guises. He can play those perfectly round notes like his mentor, Richard Egues, or he can set his flute aflutter buzzing and riffing to his heart’s content. At all times, he is unmistakably Maraca.
Ever since his début album, Fórmula Uno, Maraca has been stretching beyond traditional Cuban music into Latin Jazz. Paying homage to his elders, but always with an eye to the future.
In this live recording Maraca is accompanied by his Latin Jazz All Stars, and the title is not hyperbolic. Horacio “EL Negro” Hernández, Latin master of the extended drum kit, matches Maraca’s versatility, commanding a palette that ranges from the terribly tender to the simply terrific. Harold López-Nussa, still in his twenties, is making Uncle Ernán very proud. He can stand a montuno on its ear, bring in da funk with his fills or evoke the giddy heights of a Chucho Valdés flight of fancy, from one moment to the next, without prior notice. Giovanni Hidalgo is the Tasmanian Devil of the conga drums, playing six of the them at the same time, probably because there is no room for more on stage. He knows his Tata Guines down to his fingernails, and he learned Patato’s music lesson well.
From Canada, by was of Ronnie Scott’s in London, comes Hugh Fraser and his cosmopolitan trombone. Those who’ve heard David Sánchez emote with Charlie Haden and the Prague Symphony know his tenor sax goes down easy like the vintage red wines he enjoys. One of the album’s many delights is listening to violinist Sayaka trading fours with Maraca. Of course, she hails from Japan, where Cuban music is second only to its own, and not by much. Feliciano Arango is a true feliciano, or happy-go-lucky fellow. Listen to his electric bass holding the fort in the absence of a piano in “Manteca”. Enrique Lazaga is a guiro practitioner to remember, half-a-century after Gustavo Tamayo.
It is distinguished company that Maraca keeps in this album, but it is the Orquesta de Cámara de La Habana under the direction of Iván del Prado, that takes the album to another level. Listen to the audience respond to the pizzicato fugue near the end of Guido López-Gavilán’s “Camerata en Guaguancó”. When was the last time you heard a chamber orchestra in a Latin Jazz concert? It is the Orquesta that brings Maraca’s gift for melody (in both composition and performance) to its fullest expression. Maraca’s own “Danzón Siglo XXI” can sit beside Cervantes’ “Serenata Cubana” without blushing. His “Afro” may not be as blue as Mongo’s, but it is haunting on its own.
Some artists, having attained a considerable measure of acclaim, sit back and rest in their laurels. Regrettably, this has happened only too often in Latin Jazz. A sameness pervades much of this genre’s output in the past decade. The same old warhorses are trotted out to ever diminishing results. Boredom sets in. It takes something like Live At The Grand Theater of Havana to make you prick up your ears and renew your faith in the music.
Nat Chediak, Key Biscayne, February 3rd, 2011CDBaby
