Description
Label Review.
2020 album. Afro-Cuban jazz.
Our Overview.
The new album by the prolific saxophone player Raúl Gutiérrez (ex-Afrocuban All Stars) with a long list of sidemen, deeply rooted in Afro-Cuban jazz as members of Buena Vista Social Club.
Saxophonist Raúl Gutiérrez is one of the most prolific musicians in South American jazz whose biography is deeply associated with Latin jazz, Afro-Cuban music and tropical music - genres in which he was leader of a series of big bands. Raúl Gutiérrez’s career started in the 1970s when he studied classical clarinetbefore the visit of drummer Elvin Jones in 1972 forever changed his point of view on music. In Lyon, he joined the avant-garde jazz collective ARFI, which sought to create an imaginary folklore through liberated improvisation, and then the big band La Marmite Infernale, played in Tito Puente’s orchestra for a long time in Europe and finally in 1981 he founded in Munich what would be his great personal project IRAZU which he kept running in Cuba for a long time into the new millennium in various incarnations.
Gutiérrez then joined Afrocuban All Stars, a group that along with the Buena Vista Social Club reopened the doors for Cuban music and toured the world extensively. All these years of activity in Afro-Cuban and Latin jazz are present on his latest album “Dias De Illuvia” for which Gutiérrez (now based in Mexico) invited an illustrious group of young lions as well as reputed players from the scene: Lazaro Oviedo, Adolfo Argudin “Perruchin”, Yaker Manzano, Rolando Luna and Armadito Valdes.
The larger part of the 11 songs were arranged by Horacio Gonzales who until his death in 2018 was director of the cabaret “Tropicana” and one of the key figures in Cuban culture in general, and Jess Fuller who in the past worked with Lou Donaldson, Dizzy Gillespie, Paquito d’Rivera, “Papa” Jo Jones, Gerry Mulligan and more - including a splendid version of the jazz standard “Heres That Rainy Day”, the unofficial title track of a truly accomplished album!
Tracklisting: Beautiful Love / Embraceable You / Callejeros / Tema De La Tarde / Salsa Con Swing / Homenaje Al Bolero / Here’s That Rainy Day / September Song / Son Progresivo / Cheek To Cheek / Peque a Descarga En Bb