2011 Latin Music Highs and Lows (Part 2): Latin Jazz
Posted on 12. Jan, 2012 by Hector Aviles in Blog
Latin Jazz had a fabulous 2011! There were so many good releases that I may need more than one blog to talk about all of them. Once again, I list them in no particular order, so let’s get right to it.
Latin Jazz 2011 Highlights:
Bobby Sanabria & The Manhattan School of Music: “Tito Puente Masterworks Live”. This is another great production by Puerto Rican percussionist Bobby Sanabria. This is a Live recording with the quality of a studio album, with a great selection of Tito Puente’s classics performed masterfully by the students of the Manhattan School of Music in New York.
Miguel Zenon ‘s “Alma Adentro; The Puerto Rican Songbook”. Perhaps one of my personal favorites of 2011, this excellent album grabs timeless beautiful songs from 5 Puerto Rican songwriters and delivers them in masterful jazz arrangements. I also went to his show at Seattle’s Jazz Alley, which was excellent.
Poncho Sanchez’ “Chano y Dizzy” with Terrance Blanchard: I really enjoyed this album as the selections from Dizzy’s repertoire are always great to listen, especially with Terrance adding pizzaz to Poncho’s band.
Jose Rizo’s “Mongorama”: another well deserve homage to a great musician, this time to Mongo Santamaria, this album has a stellar line-up with includes Poncho Sanchez, Justo Almario, Oscar Hernandez, and Adonis Puentes among many others. I would think this is more a tropical album than a Latin Jazz album with lots of Cuban music, but regardless is another fun album to listen.
Orlando “Maraca” Valle’s “Reencuentros”; Cuban flautist and former Irakere member “Maraca” delivers a masterpiece in this CD/DVD Latin Jazz homerun. If this album doesn’t win a Grammy, I don’t know what does. It has received very little marketing and publicity, but “Reencuntros” reunites an amazing line-up, headlined by the return to Cuba of master drummer Horacio “El Negro” Hernandez, and Puerto Ricans David Sanchez in sax, and Giovanni Hidalgo in the congas. I just don’t get tired of listening to this album time and again!
Michel Camilo’s “Mano a Mano”; another great album by the Dominican pianist, who teams up with master Puerto Rican conguero Giovanni Hidalgo delivering very creative music.
Dave Valentin’s “Pure Imagination”; the master flautist makes a great comeback with this album.
I left a lot out, but had to draw the line at some point. The point is there was a lot of great Latin Jazz and Jazz delivered this past year, and you can’t go wrong with any of the above.
Latin Jazz 2011 Lowlights:
Music wise, none, but NARAS elimination of 31 categories from the Grammy, including the Latin Jazz category marked a big low in 2011, which will go into effect in the 2012 Grammys to be announce next month. Great disappointment and sad not more Latin artists joined and voiced their disapproval of this misguided decision that not only will hurt Latin artists, but also (without they wanting to) record labels and the music business in general, in a time when the business is not good.
As Keith Olbermann would say in his “Countdown” TV show, Neil Paltrow (NARAS Chairman) is the “Worst Person in the World”. I’ll use this one again!
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