In this article: CHUCHO VALDES IRAKERE Canarias Jazz Festival Chucho Valdés will celebrate 50 years of 'Irakere 50' at the Canarias Jazz Festival

April 9, 2024

Chucho Valdés with the 'Irakere 50' project, the quartet formed by Chris Potter, Brad Mehldau, John Patitucci and Jonathan Blake, and American vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant are featured on the lineup of the 33rd International Canarias Jazz y Más Festival, which will take place from July 5 to 27.

More than 60 concerts will be offered in the main auditoriums and theaters of the Canary Islands, as well as in their most emblematic squares, according to a statement issued Monday by the festival organizers.

Chucho Valdés will celebrate within the framework of the festival the 50th anniversary of the founding of the 'Irakere' orchestra, a formation that fused Afro-Cuban ritual music with popular Cuban music, rock and classical music, born in 1973.

Some of the original former members of the band have reunited to pay tribute to this orchestra and one of the chosen stops has been this festival, where it will offer three concerts (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Santa Cruz de Tenerife and Lanzarote).

To revive the work of this emblematic formation, Chucho Valdés, pianist, composer, arranger and winner of 13 Grammy Awards, will lead the 'Irakere 50' project, accompanied by nine musicians.

Saxophonist Chris Potter, along with pianist Brad Mehldau, bassist John Patitucci, four-time Grammy winner with a thirty-year career, and drummer Jonathan Blake, is another of the standout performances of the upcoming edition, as well as Cécile McLorin Salvant, who won the Thelonious Monk competition in 2010 and has received three consecutive Grammy Awards for best jazz album.

The lineup also includes artists such as Dave Douglas; Estrellas de Buena Vista; Veronica Swift; Knower (project led by multi-instrumentalist Louis Cole and singer Genevieve Artadi); Ana Popovic; Harold López-Nussa, Jonathan Kresiberg; Theo Croker; Antonio Lizana or London Afrobeat Collective.

The festival schedules its concerts in more than 20 performance spaces on the eight islands, which host more than 40 musical projects.