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Total jazz with Michel Legrand and Chucho Valdés
• French music at the 21st Jazz Plaza Festival
• Argentina wins the SGAE Prize BY MIREYA CASTAÑEDA—Granma International staff writer— THE exceptional French composer and pianist Michel Legrand has come back to Cuba. He came to participate in the Jazz Plaza Festival, and in a double capacity: for a concert for two pianos with another great, Chucho Valdés, and as a
member of the Latin Jazz SGAE Prize jury. Without any doubt, jazz is an inseparable part of Legrand’s musical life (born Paris, 1932). In one of the many interviews he has given, he assured: “Jazz has influenced my life
because I grew up with it. I believe that jazz is one of the most significant musical events of the 20th century. It has become part of my culture, I play jazz as if it were my language. Improvising keeps your fingers and mind flexible and young.”
He has also noted that jazz was a genre banned by the Nazis during the war. But 1947 came and a friend took him to a Dizzy Gillespie concert at the Pleyel. “My life began that night.” Then he was able to buy recordings of Miles Davis, Stan Kenton and Count
Basie. After completing his piano studies he worked with singers like Jaqueline François and was musical director for Maurice Chevalier, with whom he visited New York for the first time in 1956. At 22 he made his first disc, “I love Paris,” which became a bestseller in Europe and the United States, “but I didn’t get any royalties for it.” While he was in New York a U.S. recording company gave him the option of cutting any
disc that he wanted, given that “I love Parts” had sold millions of copies. “I want to make a jazz album,” Legrand replied, “with Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Ben Bill Evans, Hank Jones and Phil Woods.” It was Legrand
Jazz. Thus Michel Legrand’s relationship with jazz, which he has shared with Sarah Vaughan, Stan Getz, Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles and Lena Horne, is an intimate, impassioned and loyal one. Legrand is a prolific composer, having created more than 200 pieces for film and television, written various muscials (who could forget Les parapluies de Cherbourg, directed by Jacques Demy?), has won three Oscars (among them
for two classics “The windmills of your mind,” and “How do you keep the music playing?” the latter from Yenti, directed by Barbara Streisand). Both songs are the result of his joint work with Alan and Marilyn Bergman,
who have set unforgettable words to Legrand’s exceptional music. Some years ago the three of them gave a memorable concert in the Carlos Marx Theater in Havana. Legrand returned, precisely during one of the Havana film festivals, to play his Concertoratorio, conducted by Zenaida Romeu. Now Michel Legrand has come back to Havana, invited by Chucho Valdés for the Jazz Plaza Festival. The expectation of a musical success was valid. Both musicians and composers reiterated via the piano why they have made history. OTHER PARTICIPANTS The opening gala of Jazz Plaza 2004 took place in
the Karl Marx Theater. The invited jazz artists were Canadian Decidedly Jazz and Hugh Fraser (trombone) and Quintet, and Brazilians Wagner Tirso (piano), Leo Gandelman (saxophone) and his Quintet, plus Argentine Víctor Biglione resident in Brazil and their hosts, Habana Ensemble, headed by saxophonist
César López. Much applauded – at other moments and in other spaces – were Argentine guitarist Luis Salinas, the Latin from the North group, German sax player Peter Weniger’s trio, and Spaniards Jordi Berni (piano),
Xavi Hinojosa (drums) and David González (bass). Sadly, it is ceasing to be news that US musicians (or filmmakers, academics and scientists) are denied visas to travel to the island in their country. Cuban artists
were represented throughout the Festival by the best of jazz, dedicated and young. For example, the Plaza Casa de la Cultura, where the festival was born, welcomed on one of the nights (December 16-19) Orlando Valle Maraca who has become one of the great flute players of the moment. There too was Bobby
Carcasés, one of the festival founders. Recounting the line-ups would be an extensive task but the performances of pianists Ernán López-Nussa and Aldo López Gavilán, Giraldo Piloto (on drums in the Legrand-Valdés
concert), or Bellita and her Jazztumbatá, should be highlighted. The closing gala was dedicated to the singer Mayra Caridad Valdés, for her 25th anniversary on the stage. With her brother Chucho heading the line-up,
she convened the finest of Latin jazz. LATIN JAZZ PRIZE The fourth Latin Jazz prize awarded by the General Society of Authors and Editors (SGAE) and consisting of 8,000 euros, was won by the Argentine composer Guillermo Ernesto Reuter, whose piece El gorgojo imposed itself over the other six compositions by musicians from Spain,
Cuba, Venezuela and Colombia. The second prize, of 5,000 euros, went to Colombian Orlando Sandoval with Nostalgia, while the third, of 2,500 euros, was shared between Cubans Rember Duarte for Azul and José
Antonio Rivero Rodríguez for Pa’ Elegguá. The jury was presided over by Chucho Valdés and made up of Michel Legrand, Spanish singer Soledad Giménez, Luis Salinas and Brazilian sax player Carlos Malta. Havana was total jazz, as the festival has been appropriately named in their TV program by colleagues and friends Rita Rosa and Carlos Figueroa. The other good news after these days of concerts is that Jazz Plaza is now going to be
annual event. The hope is that it does not coincide again (even in the last few days) with the Havana Film Festival.
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