Chucho Valdes & The Afro-Cuban Messengers - Border-Free (2013) [Official Digital Download 24-bit/96kHz]

"Border-Free" is a companion piece and a doubling-down on Chucho Valdés’ magnificent Chucho’s Steps album from 2010. Valdés has retained most of his Afro-Cuban Messengers (although the drummer and bassist are new, the percussionist, vocalist/bata player and trumpeter return), pays tribute once again to family members and key historical musicians and cultures, and reprises the previous album’s virtuosic hopping and condensing of genres.

Chucho Valdes, Cuba's most famous jazz musician, has rebalanced the repertoire of his Afro-Cuban Messengers on Border-Free, mixing its American-jazz agenda (the group's name deliberately references both Valdes' roots and the late Art Blakey's classic soul-bop Jazz Messengers group) with more extended Latin-American input, and some Native American and Andalusian connections, too. Saxophonist Branford Marsalis, guesting on three tracks, is warmly romantic on tenor on the loping Tabu, agile and fluent on the Cuban dance-shuffle Bebo, and mercurial on a soprano-sax break full of north African microtonalisms on the hurtling, horn-hooting finale, Abdel. The stomping Afro-Comanche sounds like the work of a 1970s McCoy Tyner band, and Pilar is a delicate love song for Valdes and a cello-like arco bass that eventually becomes a straight piano-trio ballad. The pieces sometimes sound too polished and generic, but Valdes' every dancing intro, incisive fill and storming chordal eruption on piano is always irresistable, and his solo opener on the breathless Congadanza is a nine-minute exposition of exactly why he remains one of jazz piano's most majestic virtuosos.

Tracklist:

01 - Congadanza
02 - Caridad Amaro
03 - Tabú
04 - Bebo
05 - Afro-Comanche
06 - Pilar
07 - Santa Cruz
08 - Abdel

Recorded: Abdala Studio, Havana, Cuba and in Comanche Recording Studio, Málaga, Spain, in December 2012.

Musicians:
Chucho Valdés – piano
Reinaldo Melián Alvarez - trumpet
Dreiser Durruthy Bombalé - batás, lead vocals
Rodney Barreto Illarza - drums, vocals
Ángel Gastón Joya Perellada - double bass, vocals
Yaroldy Abreu Robles - percussion, vocals
Branford Marsalis - tenor sax on Tabú & Bebo - soprano sax on Abdel


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