Chucho Valdes & The Afro-Cuban Messengers - Border-Free ( Jazz Village2013)

Chucho Valdes, Cuba's most famous jazz musician, has rebalanced the repertoire of his Afro-Cuban Messengers on Border-Free, mixing its American-jazz agenda (the group's name deliberately references both Valdes' roots and the late Art Blakey's classic soul-bop Jazz Messengers group) with more extended Latin-American input, and some Native American and Andalusian connections, too. Saxophonist Branford Marsalis, guesting on three tracks, is warmly romantic on tenor on the loping Tabu, agile and fluent on the Cuban dance-shuffle Bebo, and mercurial on a soprano-sax break full of north African microtonalisms on the hurtling, horn-hooting finale, Abdel. The stomping Afro-Comanche sounds like the work of a 1970s McCoy Tyner band, and Pilar is a delicate love song for Valdes and a cello-like arco bass that eventually becomes a straight piano-trio ballad. The pieces sometimes sound too polished and generic, but Valdes' every dancing intro, incisive fill and storming chordal eruption on piano is always irresistable, and his solo opener on the breathless Congadanza is a nine-minute exposition of exactly why he remains one of jazz piano's most majestic virtuosos.
John Fordham    guardian.co.uk,