Chucho Valdés

Dionisio de Jésus " Chucho " Valdés Rodríguez ( born October 9, 1941 in Havana, Cuba) is a Cuban pianist and composer of Latin jazz and modern jazz, working on compounds of Cuban music with other music genres. He is one of the most famous Cuban jazz musician.

Life and work

Valdés comes from a family Pianist: Bebo Valdés was his father; his mother Pilar Rodríguez is also a pianist, like his son Chuchito Valdés. He began with the piano playing at the age of three years and was in 1950 the entrance examination for the conservatory in Havana. As a teenager, he played in the house band at Club Tropicana, whose music director he was. At 16 he was already head a separate group. From 1963 he played with Arturo Sandoval and Paquito D' Rivera, with whom he 1967, the Orquesta Cubana de Música Moderna founded. With this ensemble he performed his own compositions such as " Misa Negra " (1969). In 1970, he stepped on the Jazz Jamboree in Warsaw. With Sandoval and D' Rivera in 1973 he founded the group Irakere, 1978 at the Montreux Jazz Festival and the Newport Jazz Festival occurred. Valdés, who was the main composer of the group, this also led after the departure of Sandoval and D' Rivera on. After he received a contract with Blue Note Records, he concentrated his performances and recordings on quartet, trio and solo projects. He also worked as a sideman with Roy Hargrove. The line of Irakere in 1998 he gave to his son Francisco from.

Valdés acts since 1980 as President of the Havana Jazz Festival which he founded. He is a professor and head of the piano department of the Instituto Superior de Arte. He also teaches at the Escuela Nacional de Arte in Cuba, but also at the Berklee College of Music

Valdés published so far 31 plates, of which five awarded Grammy Awards. He has a very powerful, rich phrasing game in which he can incorporate Latin American harmonies and African-American rhythms.

He is an honorary citizen of Ponce (Puerto Rico) and the U.S. cities Los Angeles, San Francisco, New Orleans and Madison.

In April 2003, Valdés was one of a group of prominent Cuban cultural workers who signed one in the newspaper of the Cuban Communist Party, Granma published open letter, which was sent to friends of Cuba in the world and international criticism of the human rights policy of the Cuban government as anti-Cuban campaign of vilification rejected: in the weeks before President Fidel Castro had in a known as the " black spring" crackdown 75 critical journalists and civil rights activists sentenced to long prison terms in summary proceedings and leave three young black Cubans after the bloodless failed attempt of a ship hijacking also executed after summary trials.

Lexigraphischer entry

• Martin Kunzler: Jazz Encyclopedia, vol 2, 2002 ISBN 3-499-16513-9.