The refinement of old Havana met the brashness of New York City when the 88-year-old Cuban pianist Bebo Valdés joined the Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra in Friday’s Jazz at Lincoln Center concert at the Rose Theater.
For Jazz at Lincoln Center, Bebo Valdés, right, conducts the Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra in his “Suite Cubana.”
Mr. Valdés, who has lived in Stockholm since 1963 and emerged from three decades of obscurity in 1994, has played New York in various settings, notably in a duo with the flamenco singer Diego El Cigala. But this concert was primarily a showcase for Mr. Valdés as composer and big-band arranger, and featured the United States premiere of his “Suite Cubana,” which he recorded for his Grammy Award-winning 2005 album, “Bebo de Cuba” (Calle 54).
Back in the 1950’s, Mr. Valdés was the house pianist at the Tropicana nightclub in Havana and, until he emigrated, he was the leader of his own big band, Orquesta Sabor de Cuba. He knows big-band composition from the inside. “Suite Cubana,” written in the 1990’s, blends nostalgia and musicianly invention. The foundation is classic Cuban rhythms, ever danceable; atop them, Mr. Valdés sends alluring melodies through contrapuntal transformations to brassy peaks.
The concert began on a smaller scale, with Mr. Valdés playing solo and then leading an ensemble that grew to 11 pieces in descargas, or Latin jam sessions, that included tunes from “Bebo de Cuba.”
On piano, Mr. Valdés revealed his conservatory training and an epigrammatic wit. There’s Chopin and Mozart in his playing, as well as Cuban son and danza. His touch is precise and dainty, and his voicings are transparent; he delineates the rhythm of a mambo or a guajira with a few syncopated chords, neatly sets out a theme, then dances above it with lines in parallel octaves or twinkly filigree. Working with an ensemble, he animates the group like a puppeteer pulling marionette strings up above, barely visible but essential. His descarga group at Rose Hall featured Michael Philip Mossman on trumpet, who summoned the wry, sweet-and-sour tone of vintage Cuban musicians.
It was a initial letdown when, with the full Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra mustered for “Suite Cubana,” Mr. Valdés sat in a conductor’s chair with the score while the orchestra’s leader, Arturo O’Farrill, took over on piano. (Mr. Valdés returned to the piano for the finale, “Ecuación.”) But the suite became a repertory piece, brilliantly played, seguing from urbane melodies to dance vamps to elaborate counterpoint. “Devoción” was a series of fantasias rising out of the six-beat rhythms of the Afro-Cuban spirit ceremony called bembé, from an Ellingtonian ballad to an elaborate fugue.
Mr. O’Farrill is a magnificent player himself, but from a different pianistic school: sharper, splashier, more driving, even when he paid tribute to Mr. Valdés’s light-fingered approach. And while the soloists — including Mr. Mossman and Raúl Agraz on trumpets, Mario Rivera on tenor saxophone, Luis Bonilla on trombone and Bobby Porcelli on alto saxophone — had recorded “Suite Cubana” with Mr. Valdés in 2002, now the tone was different: trombones charged ahead; high-note trumpets screamed. “Suite Cubana” became not only an expatriate’s fond remembrances, but also a determined, joyful way to keep them alive.
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