For more than a half-century, the embrace between Cuba and
the United States has been subject to an odd dance of politics, including a
still-standing embargo. Nevertheless, the bond between the two nations is deep
and strong as ever, expressed most forcefully through the dance of
culture-especially music.
It's hard to imagine the U.S. jazz scene without the
influence of the many Cuban musicians living here. Yet the musicians who remain
in Cuba-whose relationship with jazz and other musical forms stays grounded in
their native island's cultural traditions and daily life-maintain a unique
perspective. They tell a specific story.
Un Día Cualquiera (Just Another Day), pianist Harold
López-Nussa's second release for Mack Avenue Records, represents this musical
vantage point with force and innovation. He tells this story - his story - with
drama, heartfelt emotion and consummate skills.
López-Nussa was born 1983 in Havana, where he still lives.
"I need the kind of relaxed life that Havana gives me," he said. For
López-Nussa, whose award-winning music has led to international tours and who
holds dual citizenship in Cuba and France. "Every time I return to Cuba, I
feel something special-not just a connection with my family and friends, but
with the place itself. This is where my music comes from, what it talks
about."
His previous Mack Avenue album, El Viaje (The Journey), was
released on the heels of President Obama's historic 2016 visit to Havana,
against a backdrop of newly relaxed trade and travel restrictions. Un Día
Cualquiera arrives as U.S. restrictions regarding Cuba again tighten under the
Trump administration; considered in that light, the album is an affirmative
statement that music will always cross borders and defy obstacles. "I want
to grow closer to the American people," López-Nussa said. "This has
always been an important desire for Cubans, especially musicians. It's impossible
for us to be separate because we have so much in common, so much to
share."
Musically, Lopez-Nussa's last album augmented his band with
additional instruments and influences, including Senegalese bassist Alune Wade,
to achieve a globalized sound. For "Un Día Cualquiera," Lopéz-Nussa
sticks to his core trio, with his younger brother Ruy Adrián López-Nussa on
drums and percussion, and bassist Gaston Joya-a group the pianist first
convened a decade ago in Cuba.
"These are my closest friends and two of the greatest
musicians of my generation in Cuba," he said. "We've played a lot
together through the years, but this is the first time that we've toured and
recorded as a working trio. When we play to together, something special always
happens and I feel comfortable and free, because they know how my music works
and where I will go even before I get there."
The island of Cuba is dotted with families known for musical
achievement. López-Nussa grew up in one such home. On May 18, 2018, Washington
D.C.'s Kennedy Center will pay tribute to this legacy within its sprawling
"Artes de Cuba Festival" through a concert showcasing the Lopéz-Nussa
family. Harold Lopéz-Nussa and his brother will perform alongside their father,
Ruy López-Nussa, an esteemed drummer and educator, and their uncle, Ernán
López-Nussa, an acclaimed pianist. (Their late mother, Mayra Torres, was a
highly regarded piano teacher.)
Harold López-Nussa's music reflects the full range and
richness of Cuban music, with its distinctive combination of classical,
folkloric and popular elements, as well as its embrace of jazz improvisation
and interaction. His career gracefully spans styles. Early on, he recorded
Heitor Villa-Lobos ́ Fourth Piano Concerto with Cuba's National Symphony
Orchestra (2003) and won First Prize at the Jazz Solo Piano Competition at the
Montreux Jazz Festival, Switzerland (2005). He was featured on the album Ninety
Miles, playing alongside jazz stars David Sánchez, Christian Scott and Stefon
Harris, and Esencial(of compositions by revered Cuban classical guitarist,
composer and conductor Leo Brouwer). He spent three years in the touring band
of the beloved Cuban singer Omara Portuondo.
At the age of eight, López-Nussa began studying at the
Manuel Saumell Elementary School of Music, then the Amadeo Roldán Conservatory
and finally graduating with a degree in classical piano from the Instituto
Superior de Artes (ISA). On two tracks here, he dips into the repertoire of
Ernest Lecuona-"one of the greatest Cuban composers of all time," he
said, who, like Gershwin in the U.S., brought indigenous and popular forms to
bear on classical repertoire. Lopez-Nussa's interpretations of "Danza de
los Ñañigos," which is based on Afro-Cuban religious rituals, and "Y
la Negra Bailaba," which, he said, "is somewhere between Cuban son
and danzón styles," represent less liberties taken than the unfolding of a
deep understanding of Lecuona's towering legacy.
López-Nussa grew up in Centro Habana, a neighborhood known
for its folkloric Afro-Cuban ceremonies. "There would be two or three
ceremonies each week, and I could hear them from my house," he recalled.
"What I soaked in there has never left me." His original composition,
"Elegua," translates batá drum rhythms and chants for a Yoruba deity
to a jazz-trio format, and forms one of the album's dramatic high points.
The ease and invention with which he improvises at the
piano, and the suppleness with which his trio swings make it hard to believe
that López-Nussa didn't really take up jazz until he was 18 years old.
"Jazz was scary," he said. "Improvisation was scary." Yet
he felt emboldened by Herbie Hancock's 1996 album, The New Standard, of jazz
interpretations of pop, rock and R&B songs. "That gave me new ideas
about what was possible, and what I could do," he said. He found
inspiration, too, from Cuba's great jazz pianists-the ongoing work of the
reigning master Chucho Valdés, as well as recordings of Chucho's father, the
late Bebo Valdés. Here, López-Nussa's composition, "Una Tarde Cualquiera
en Paris," pays homage to the calm, reflective quality of Bebo's pianism.
Another López-Nussa original, "Mi Son Cerra'o" is meant to evoke the
sound and spirit of the early descargas (jam sessions) on which Bebo played,
the earliest Cuban jazz recordings. López-Nussa's tender rendition of
"Contigo en la Distancia" a bolero written by Cuban singer-songwriter
César Portillo de la Luz in 1946 (covered in the decades since by singers
ranging from Plácido Domingo to Christina Aguilera) reveals lessons learned on
bandstands accompanying Omara Portuondo. "She showed me how to put all of
your passion, your whole existence, into a single song," he said.
Un Día Cualquiera is a forceful statement from a Cuban
musician leading his tight-knit Cuban band, recorded in the U.S. (at WGBH
Studios in Boston, Mass.), and influenced by music from both countries in ways
that transcend narrow notions of "Latin jazz." The album nods to
classic Cuban composers and musicians but it focuses mostly on pianist Harold
López-Nussa's original compositions and his distinctive trio concept. These
compositions are mostly new, save for one or two, such as the opener,
"Cimarrón," which are older pieces reinvented for the present moment.
López-Nussa chose the new album's title, which means
"Just Another Day," because, he said, "the idea is to put the
music and the trio together in a studio and just play, the way we three do
every day, any day-like a concert in the living room of your house."
Tour Dates:
May 10: Coutances Jazz Festival / Coutances, France
May 18: The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts /
Washington, DC
July 7: Salle Yves Montan / St. Canaat, France
July 9: Jazz A Porquerolle / Fort St. Agatha, Hyères, France
July 15: North Sea Jazz Festival / Ahoy Rotterdam,
Rotterdam, Netherlands
August 4: Shalin Liu Performance Center / Rockport, MA
August 5: Newport Jazz Festival / Newport, RI
August 8: Boothbay Opera House / Boothbay Harbor, ME
September 2: Detroit Jazz Festival / Detroit, MI
September 22: Monterey Jazz Festival / Monterey, CA
February 10, 2019: Arts Garage / Delray Beach, FL
Harold López-Nussa · Un Día Cualquiera
Mack Avenue Records · Release Date: June 15, 2018
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