Traditional Pop Vocal Album: “Crazy Love,” Michael Buble
Latin Jazz Album: “Chucho’s Steps,” Chucho Valdes and The Afro-Cuban Messengers
Contemporary Jazz Album: “The Stanley Clarke Band,” The Stanley Clarke Band
Jazz Vocal Album: “Eleanora Fagan (1915-1959): To Billie With Love From >Dee Dee,” Dee Dee Bridgewater
Jazz Instrumental Album: “Moody 4B,” James Moody
Improvised Jazz Solo: “A Change is Gonna Come,” Herbie Hancock
Large Ensemble Jazz Album: “Mingus Big Band Live at Jazz Standard,” Mingus Big Band
Pop Collaboration With Vocals: “Imagine,” Herbie Hancock and Larry Klein, arrangers (Herbie Hancock, Pink, Seal, Jeff Beck, India.Arie, Konono No 1 & Oumou Sangare)
Pop Instrumental Album: “Take Your Pick,” Larry Carlton and Tak Matsumoto
Chucho Valdés and The Afro-Cuban Messengers -][- Chucho’s Steps – [Four Quarters, 2010]
Born in Quivicán, Cuba in 1941, Chucho Valdés is one of Cuba’s most famous pianists, bandleaders, composers and arrangers. Perhaps best known for founding the famous Latin jazz band Irakere in 1972, Chucho’s illustrious career has also garnered him 6 Grammy wins and 16 nominations over the past three decades. His most recent win, a 2009 Latin Grammy for the record Juntos para Siempre, saw him collaborate with his father, Bebo Valdés, a major player on the Cuban jazz scene in his own right. Chucho Valdés has recorded over eighty CD’s and performed with everybody who is anybody in the world of jazz; from Herbie Hancock and Dizzy Gillespie, to Wynton Marsalis and Chick Corea.
His reputation as one of the greatest living Cuban jazz pianists has earned him appearances on the great stages in music, including Carnegie Hall, The Kennedy Center and The Hollywood Bowl. Chucho’s new album with the Afro-Cuban Messengers, which will extensively tour the USA in October 2010, marks Chucho’s return to the US for the first time in 7 years.
Greeting’s jazz enthusiasts, it’s great to be back this week with the stunning new project “Solo” by modern jazz pianist Vijay Iyer as our featured “Album of the Week.”
As always, there’s another intricate canvas of what’s -cool – and maybe not so -cool- from a optimistic perspective we don’t usually find in the diet of the chromatic pop music culture. The origin of new music featured each week encompasses various branches of jazz, which exudes a wealth of complex and distinctive styles, insinuating textures, immaculate melodies, and relentless rhythms exalted by the definitive voices of creative artists serves up sounds to quench our immutable thirst for quality music.
ACT Music presents Vijay’s most personal statement yet: a kaleidoscopic solo piano album, his first, presents bold originals alongside works by Ellington and Monk, as well as a reverent take on Michael Jackson’s “Human Nature.” Release date: August 31, 2010. —ACT Music
“Bursting with both emotion and intelligence, this album is a dispatch from the vibrant forefront of jazz”
—The Utne Reader
“even more compelling than its predecessor… Iyer dives deep to find new twists and turns and harmonic surprises; all of them, however radical, sounding ineffably right, all of them glistening with a sense of revealed mystery… magic, from start to finish.” —All About Jazz
2010 MUSICIAN OF THE YEAR – Jazz Journalists Association Annual Jazz Awards
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