2/1/2024 0 Comments Elias 7 year old piano prodigyIt was beautiful to see the way he played with his father. I had the night off, and I was invited to go listen to their concert. He was playing duets with his father, Bebo Valdes, playing at the same theater in Barcelona that I was going to play the night after. I met Chucho, I think it was in 2000, the first time. I met Chucho much later than I met Chick. RL: What’s your history with Chucho Valdes?ĮE: He's a beautiful player. I'm very, very grateful that we had this opportunity. I believe this was the last studio recording he made. And it was it was very sad, but I'm thrilled that he left us with this. On the day he passed, I was mixing the recording, so I was immersed in our music. He seemed so healthy, and we had plans to play together, to write things together. It was so hard for me, and for so many, that Chick left us. OK, let's do those." And we didn't even count, you know, when you count off the tune before you start? Nothing, we just started playing, and that was it. Except with some of the tunes, he mentioned a couple, and I mentioned a couple and it was, "OK I know that. RL: And I understand that you didn't really plan anything ahead of time.ĮE: That's right. We heard each other, the affinity that we demonstrated when we played together was very, very special. The communication, the way we approached the music. And what you hear on this recording is really remarkable, the way we played together. The engineers had already done the set up. We walked in and hugged each other and went right to our pianos. He was a Yamaha artist, so we went to the Yamaha Artists Service in New York City, where the pianos were selected. We texted each other, talked a little bit about tunes, made suggestions. I'd known him for so many years, decades really, and we always talked about, "Oh, we have to play some time and do something together." It happened that our schedules coincided at the end of 2018 and we said, "OK, let's do it." I have always liked playing piano duets, and with Chick Corea, we had talked about playing duets for a long time. How did this project come about?ĮE: Well, this particular album has been in my mind for a while. Lincoln 77.Īrt accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Michael Jackson.RL: We’re excited that you're coming to the Triple Door in Seattle, and you're touring on your new album, " Mirror Mirror," which is an amazing collection of duets - you with Chick Corea and with Chucho Valdes. Saturday, May 12, 7:30 PM, Old Town School of Folk Music, 4544 N. And his presence underscores Elias’s appreciation for Evans’s approach to the trio as a three-way partnership, rather than a strict hierarchy. With his lustrous sound and dazzling technique, Johnson has succeeded Eddie Gomez as Elias’s favored bass man–just as he succeeded Gomez in Bill Evans’s trio in the late 70s, becoming the last bass player in that long-running group. At this show Elias will lead the exceptional trio from her 1997 album, The Three Americas, featuring drummer Satoshi Takeishi and bassist Marc Johnson, who’s worked with her for the past ten years. Her generally light touch sometimes echoes the breeziness of bossa nova, but she counters it by pushing her piano voicings into the hidden crevasses of a song’s harmonic structure, in the process broadening and deepening the impact of her lithe finger work. Though Elias’s discography emphasizes her roots–ranging from pre-samba chorinho to Ivan Lins’s post-tropicalia pop, and including two entire albums devoted to the songs of Antonio Carlos Jobim–she’s always been an excellent jazz pianist from Brazil, as opposed to a pianist playing Brazilian jazz. On the current record her bright, airy technique and voluptuous embrace of all her materials makes it plain enough that she can play anything she chooses–so her omission of Brazilian music serves as a rebuttal to anyone still inclined to typecast her as a latter-day girl from Ipanema. About the only thing missing from Everything is Brazilian music, but Elias has displayed her fondness for it on most of her previous albums. The core of the album consists of selections from the Great American Songbook (Berlin, Gershwin, Porter), but Elias also offers tunes by Dizzy Gillespie and Charles Mingus a song of her own in memory of Bud Powell and on several tracks, semicomposed “introductions” that demonstrate her respect for Keith Jarrett. When Brazilian-born polymath pianist and sometime singer Eliane Elias named her most recent record Everything I Love (Blue Note), she wasn’t kidding. Best of Chicago 2022: Sports & Recreation.Best of Chicago 2022: Music & Nightlife.Get your Best of Chicago tickets! Line-Up Announced > Close
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |