Cuban expatriate
Alfredo Rodriguez performs on Cuban Jazz with Los Acerekó, a group of close musical friends who play with a number of Cuban groups. It's a pretty basic session of Cuban jazz, with some fine players pitching in to provide work on the various pieces of the ensemble. There's a blend of old Cuban classics, American jazz, and new compositions covering the spectrum of genres throughout the album. Perhaps more notably, Rodriguez was classically trained, giving him the ability to work himself into a light classical mode with references to any number of composers along the way. It doesn't necessarily have the pounding beat and piano acrobatics of a
Chucho Valdes album, but then again, Rodriguez isn't trying to do that in the first place. It's a nice look through a catalog of genres spanned by a group of friends meeting for a tour in Paris, and the sound is just that: a happy endeavor among some good musicians. Pick it up for the classical bent, but for pure Cuban jazz power, look up some
Irakere or solo
Valdes work first. ~ Adam Greenberg