Havana (1990)

A young girl's academic asperation conflict with her family's struggle against poverty. Both these aspects are made all the more potent by the clear view they have of Ernest Hemingway's mansion in their home town just outside Havana.

It's a Dizzy Gillespie in flower-patterned Bermuda shorts that this CD gives us, a Dizzy playing the trumpet and singing in the shade of the plams growing on the beach of one's dreams. the same Diz who, in the film "A Night in Havana", proclaimed his faith in the future of a music gathering all the Afro-American currents together, and who practiced what he preached as early as 1948: fronting his legendary Big Band, whose echo can be heard here during "Whisper Not", Dizzy imposed Cu-Bop, a happy marriage of Jazz and Cuban rhythms that was celebrated in the enthusiasm and rage of youth. Since then, Dizzy has never given up his quest for the slightest sound to come from the guardian-mother Africa…

Gonzalo Julio Gonzalez Fonseca was born in post-revolutionary Havana into a musical family rich in the traditions of the country’s artistic past. During his childhood, in addition to the standard fare of elementary schools, Gonzalo absorbed the Cuban musical heritage of his nascent environment through personal contacts within his family, notably his father, pianist Guillermo Rubalcaba and his two brothers (pianist and bassist) as well as from leading musicians who were frequent houseguests: Frank Emilio, Peruchin, Felipe Dulzaides and others. He also assimilated, through scarce and treasured recordings, the tunes and styles of 40's – 70's US jazz masters: Thelonius Monk,Bud Powell, Oscar Peterson among pianists; and instrumentalists Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Art Blakey…