Latin Music reads for the weekend

Posted on 25. Sep, 2009 by Hector Aviles in Blog

It has been a slow blogging week for me, as we had a terrible loss in my wife’s family. The extra load of playing Mr. Mom and Dad while she’s out of town to be with her family in this sad time, I will share the best I’ve found around on Latin Music.

Latin Jazz fans have good reading to catch up to, if you don’t regularly follow The Latin Jazz Corner and NPR Music. Chip Boaz has been focusing on the West Coast Latin Jazz scene, and has done a couple of excellent reviews on new recordings by two Latin Jazz musicians that have a lot in common.

Mark Levine's "Off and On"

Last week, The Latin Jazz Corner featured a review of Mark Levine’s “Off & On, The Music of Moacir Santos”. Mark is a renown musician and educator now living in the Bay Area. He has worked with Mongo Santamaria, Willie Bobo, Moacir Santos, Francisco Aguabella, Pete Escovedo, and Cal Tjader (including Cal’s Grammy-winning Concord Jazz recording “La Onda Va Bien”). Mark is a respected Latin Jazz educator, having written several books and even attending the Centro Nacional de Escuela de Arte in Havana, Cuba in 1997.Check out Chip’s review of “Off & On” in this LINK. You can also learn more about Mark Levine at his web site HERE.

Wayne Wallace

This week The Latin Jazz Corner has as “Album of the Week” “Bien, Bien” by The Wayne Wallace Latin Jazz Quintet. Trombonist Wayne as Mark, is another West Coast-Bay Area musician, who also is a renown educator. He also went to Cuba to further educate himself in Latin rhytms, attending the Escuela Nacional in Havana Cuba. Chip reviews his “Bien, Bien” recording with his trademark attention to every detail. You can read his review HERE. You can also learn more of Wayne Wallace in his web site HERE.

Edmar Castaneda

Last week I was surfing around and remembered I wanted to finish listening to the Newport Jazz Fest which NPR has as streaming audio. In the NPR site I found an audio of a live concert by Colombian Latin Jazz harp player Edmar Castaneda and his Trio performing at the Tanglewood Jazz Festival. I didn’t know Edmar, and he does an excellent performance. The young Colombian musician was very creative in the way he uses a typical Colombian harp, mixed with a piano and trombone (and a guest vibraphonist) to produce beautiful music. You can get to the audio in this page HERE.

Also in NPR, there is a concert an interesting interview to Cuban pianist Omar Sosa, in which he performs a couple of songs for a studio audience. Again, its very interesting to hear the musical background of this musician and his approach to Latin Jazz. You can get to the interview audio HERE.

Poncho Sanchez

Finally on NPR, I found a link to the full recording of Poncho Sanchez latest CD “Psychedelic Blues”. You can listen to the full recording or to individual tracks ahead of its market release on September 29th. Poncho Sanchez does great work and his one is no exception. Easy listening to this work by the master West Coast conguero. You can find the link to the NPR page with the audio stream HERE.

On the Salsa side, the reknown Peruvian radio personality Eduardo Livia has a couple of interesting blogs that captured my attention. The first one is regarding a scheduled reunion of the Puerto Rican Afro-Caribbean group Batacumbele. This is one of my favorite groups, which I followed closely since they formed in Puerto Rico. Eduardo provides the details of their upcoming reunion in a blog HERE.

Also Eduardo provides his comments on the recent “Concierto Por La Paz” which Colombian singer Juanes organized in La Havana, Cuba. You can read Eduardo’s comments and see a couple of videos he linked HERE.