Ernesto Lecuona

PLAYING LECUONA is a musical journey through the works and living spaces of Ernesto Lecuona, the internationally acclaimed pianist and piano composer from Latin America. Serving as guides through Lecuona’s music are the three most gifted Latin Jazz pianists in the world: Chucho Valdes, Michel Camilo, and Gonzalo Rubalcaba. Valdes fuses Latin Jazz together with Afro-Cuban rhythms in Lecuona’s native Havana; Camilo recreates elegant aural soundscapes in New York and the Canary Islands; and Rebalcaba fuses Jazz and Flamenco in Seville, the heart of Andalusia-Spain and a source of great inspiration to Lecuona. Together, these three musicians provide a rich portrait of Lecuona’s music and its influence.

Sounds Of Space, the title of Cuban pianist and composer Alfredo Rodriguez’ debut recording, evokes images of science fiction. In truth, it’s about a far more personal adventure. “It’s about the space that surrounds us,” he explains. “In this record I wanted to introduce myself: here are the people, the places and the sounds that have surrounded me, and made me who I am.” A key player in Rodriguez’ extraordinary story is producer Quincy Jones, who co-produced Sounds Of Space with Rodriguez.

To paraphrase Tolstoy, all happy memories feel more or less the same; but the unhappy times are experienced differently by each one of us. We’ve all had some really tough weeks, which sometimes turned into months, and (with a bit of bad luck) into years… I like to think that “off” years help us grow and prepare for the beautiful things that will undoubtedly come our way (I am an optimist at heart), but living through dark times is a complicated process.