Presented New Latin Jazz Album by César López and Habana Jazz Band

July 16, 2021

This CD is one of the most recent releases from the Unicornio de Producciónes Abdala label. Almost all the songs on the album were composed and arranged by César López himself, who also took on the musical production.

"The project arose from my desire to record with a jazz band, which was a musical format I hadn't recorded with before. I had already done it with big band, but not with jazz band, and all my albums have different formats, so from there came the idea of making a record with the jazz band. Regardless of the fact that I was already working on some arrangements for that, I didn't yet have the dramaturgy that the album would have, but essentially that was it—to make a new record with a new format in my discography and it would be with jazz band. In this case we included two trumpets, two trombones, three saxophones, percussion, drums, piano and bass," César López has stated.

"It is completely a Cuban jazz album. It is because there are Cuban rhythms like the cha-cha-cha, the bolero, the danzón, the son. That is to say, there is a reaffirmation of our native rhythms, so that's why it acquires the category of Cuban jazz, which you could also call Latin jazz, but well, specifically I want it to be called that: Cuban jazz."

"It is a tribute to great Cuban musicians who were the first to mix their country's native rhythms with jazz, among them Mario Bauzá, Machito and the Afro-Cubans, René Hernández, Chano Pozo, but above all, it is a tribute to my great school, my great teacher Chucho Valdés, who welcomed me at 19 years old in the great Irakere band and I spent nine years learning countless things with him."

"The situation with the pandemic we lived through in these times was not an obstacle to my recording. It was something I took advantage of because I had time for it, and a very important thing was that I was able to bring together musicians who are constantly traveling and happened to be in Cuba because of this situation. I was able to have first-rate musicians in the recording such as Orlando Valle, Maraca, on the flute, Reynaldo "Molote" on trumpet, Germán Velazco and Alfred Thompson on saxophone, Miguel Ángel "Wiwi" on piano, Lino Dariel on bass, Yaroldy Abreu on percussion, Ruy Adrian López-Nussa on drums, Harold Madrigal on lead trumpet, trombonists Yoandy Argudín and Eiker Fabian, Jesús Seoane as a special guest on the danzón, Alejandro Delgado on several songs, but especially on the one by Joaquín Betancourt, whom I also had the opportunity to have in an arrangement, and Jorgito Aragón in another. It was a party. I was lucky to have these musicians who were in Cuba because of the pandemic situation and I was able to bring them together for this production."