Spain's Ayva Música label has issued several albums that update traditional Latin American music styles with electronic keyboards and digital sampling. The question they raise is an interesting one: as such devices become widespread across the musical landscape, will performances in classic genres come to incorporate them as a matter of course, just as, say, traditional Anglo-American dance music incorporated the mandolin and the guitar, neither of which were indigenous to it? This release, however, takes a different approach from
Enrique Tellería's album of tango music, which created a tension between relatively traditional bandoneón playing and electronic accompaniment. Here the focus is on pianist
Tensy Krismant, playing a medley (without pauses) of famous Cuban tunes along with a few originals. He is accompanied by Cuban percussion and by Miguel Núñez on keyboards, adding an electronic wash, rhythm tracks, or simulations of orchestral instruments in various pieces. The arrangements are unusual but not generally persuasive, partly because the sounds deployed seem random.
Ernesto Lecuona's La Comparsa gets a minimal and very effective accompaniment of Cuban percussion, and the following La Antigua is played solo. Other works, such as
Krismant's original Sueño Carnavalero, make heavy use of samples and synthesized sound, however, and the whole does not really hang together. The real problem, however, is the lifeless quality of the playing. The cover notes (in Spanish only) invite you to enjoy the album with a glass of rum while sitting on a patio, which gives you an idea of the mood-music ambitions of the project.