Contumbao (Alma Records)
Hilario Durán
Released September 23, 2017
Juno Award Nominee Jazz Album of the Year: Solo 2018
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About:
Hilario Duran makes a triumphant musical homecoming on his new album Contumbao (to be released on ALMA Records on September 22, 2017). Internationally recognised as a jazz pianist, composer, arranger and bandleader of the highest order, the Cuban-Canadian Duran has been based in Toronto for the past two decades, but his musical heart and soul have remained closely connected to the land of his birth.
He has continued to collaborate with Cuban musicians, but he takes this to another level on Contumbao. “For a long time I have wanted to go back to Cuba and play and record with my longtime musical friends there,” Hilario explains. “I told Peter Cardinali [head of ALMA and Hilario’s longtime producer] of my idea, and he supported me completely.”
Last November, Cardinali and award-winning engineer John ‘Beetle’ Bailey accompanied Duran to Havana, and the team set up shop in Havana’s famed EGREM recording studio, the most storied such facility on the island. This is where the young Duran had recorded hundreds of sessions, as a pianist, arranger, composer and musical director, both with other artists and with his star Cuban band Perspectiva, in the ’80s. “The studio has not changed a lot since then,” he says. “The vibe of the room is the most important thing and it still sounds great.”
An all-star cast was assembled, and Contumbao was recorded in a 10-day period Hilario describes as “very intense. There was a lot of energy at the sessions.”
Adding evocative and compelling musical accompaniment to Duran’s fluent and expressive piano playing and compositions were guitarist (and Perspectiva bandmate) Jorge Luis Valdes (“Chicoy”), bassists Jorge Reyes and Roberto Riveron, drummer Horacio “El Negro” Herndandez , conga player Jorge Lius Torres “Papiosco”, Pancho Amat (tres), Jorge Luis Quintana “Changuito” (timbales), and Brenda Navarette (Batá and guest vocals on “Recuerdos”). The percussion group Rumberos De Cuba was recruited for two numbers, “El Tahonero” and “Rumba de Cajon.” Navarette and Riveron were recorded at a different session in Toronto.
Cuban piano great Chucho Valdes makes a special guest appearance, teaming with Hilario for a thrilling piano duet on “Duo Influenciado.” This track was also recorded in Toronto, in the midst of Valdes’ touring with Joe Lovano. “I was so pleased to record with Chucho for the first time, as he was one of my biggest influences. I used to copy all his solos,” Hilario recalls.
The admiration is mutual, as Valdes gave Duran a big career boost back in 1975 by recommending him for The Orquesta Cubana de Musica Moderna. In recent years, Valdes recruited Hilario to arrange and compose for his band, and the pair recently performed German shows featuring two pianos and an orchestra.
The cast of musical heavyweights assembled in Havana work their magic on 11 new Duran original compositions.
With Contumbao, Hilario Duran has created another compelling entry in a rich and rewarding discography. His earlier albums have earned him three Juno Awards (Canadian music’s most prestigious award) and a Grammy nomination (for 2006’s From the Heart, by Hilario Duran’s Latin Big Band, featuring Paquito D’Rivera and Horacio Hernandez). His playing has also been featured on many other award-winning albums.
His return to the recording arena with Contumbao is both welcome and richly satisfying.
Track Listing:
1: Contumbao 04:26
2: Guajira 2016 05:18
3: Pilón Influenciado 05:35
4: Recuerdos 04:47
5: Papiosco’s Match 04:07
6: El Tahonero 05:37
7: Los Muñecos 04:38
8: Parque 527 05:50
9: Segundo Encuentro 04:23
10: Duo Influenciado (feat. Chucho Valdés) 06:26
11: Rumba de Cajón (leke-leke) 04:07
12: Danzón Farewell (Danzón de la Partida) 04:19
Personnel:
Hilario Durán: piano
Jorge Luis Valdés “Chicoy”: guitar
Jorge Reyes: bass
Roberto Riveron: bass (4, 6, 8, 9)
Horacio “El Negro” Hernandez: drums
Jorge Luís Torres “Papiosco”: congas
Jorge Luis Quintana “Changuito”: timbales
Pancho Amat: tres (2)
Brenda Navarette: batá and vocals (4)
Rumberos De Cuba: vocals and percussion (6, 11)
Chucho Valdés: piano (10)
Alberto Alberto: lead vocals (11)
Recorded at EGREM Studios, Steinway Studios and Phase One Studios
Producer: Peter Cardinali
Recorded and Mixed by John “Beetle” Bailey
Additional Engineer: Taylor Kernohan
Assistant Engineer: Alejandro Pulido, Aslheis Diaz, Darren McGill
Mastered by Peter Letros
Photography by Jake Thomas, Olivia Cardinali, Toni Basanta
Art Direction: Hugh Syme
Review:
Although the brilliant, virtuoso pianist Hilario Durán might be heard in a recording studio warming up by playing a Bach Partita or one of Charlie Parker’s devilishly complex bebop pieces at breakneck speed, it is the music of Cuba that permeates his compositions. But it is because of the very fact that he is made in the image and likeness of those two grandmasters of music that he has been nicknamed ‘con tumbao’ a term that has become the title of this album, one recorded recently in the Cuba that he left behind to come to Canada many years ago. Contumbao is thus, an album deeply personal to Mr Durán, who returns to Havana’s EGREM Studios and to two of his bandmates who once made up Perspectiva, the new (1990’s) incarnation of a Grammy-Award-winning band that once played behind Arturo Sandoval before it came to be called by that name. Contumbao also marks the first time since 2005 that members of that legendary band have recorded together.
The music of Hilario Durán has become a supreme means of romantic self-expression, but whereas his great contemporary Chucho Valdés used the piano to create almost heroic self-portraits and vast panoramas, Hilario Durán is more of a sublime introvert and a miniaturist, infusing conventional forms such as the Bolero and the Danzón with an intimacy and an emotional intensity that can only be described as ‘the poetry of feeling’. This pervades all of the glorious music on Contumbao and while Hilario Durán puts an emphasis on long unbroken lines in the right hand his left hand backs them up with devastatingly intense bass lines – heard to great effect in, for instance, the especially poetic slow movements of “Guajira 2016”. What marks them out as uniquely his own is the way Mr Durán decorates a simple phrase not as ornament for ornament’s sake but as the expression of deeply felt emotion. “Duo Influenciado” towards the end of the disc captures all of this in an exquisite duo performance with Chucho Valdés, incidentally one of Mr Durán’s greatest admirers, as it also draws an invisible line between the styles of the respective grandmasters.
Structure and thematic development are also among the list of powerful technical attributes of the music of Hilario Durán. Two pieces here that display this aspect of the pianist’s work are “Contumbao” and “Segundo Encuentro”. Added to those attributes of the works is also a sense of the epic (especially in the latter piece), as well as the intensely lyrical melodicism which comes with a huge sweep of shifting moods. Meanwhile, elsewhere on the disc, on “Danzón Farewell (Danzón de la Partida)”, to be precise, its sombre main theme is followed by a slow(er) rippling figuration in the right hand. Hilario Durán’s playing stresses on the disc also the restlessness of his fertile imagination nowhere more dramatically than on “Pilón Influenciado”, which harks unto Chucho Valdés’ piece of a similar name, but which is played much faster than that other piece and develops a sense restless urgency and which he (Mr Durán) imbues with a grandeur by use of his brilliant range and control of dynamics.
A considerable part of the excitement of listening to Contumbao is discovering the transcendental aesthetic that binds Hilario Durán and his old bandmates, “Chicoy” and Jorge Reyes, and his old collaborators, “El Negro” and “Changuito”. But in his flawless playing he also produces all the necessary encouragement for relatively newer colleagues such as “Papiosco”, Roberto Riverón and Brenda Navarrete, a brilliant exponent of the ritual bàtá drums as well as a vocalist of unbridled power. The fact that Hilario Durán is able to forge a bond with musicians with such imperious ease is something that bodes exceedingly well for the future of this pianist genius who can, in the blink of an eye, transform technical pianistic challenges into music of real depth and feeling, while at the same time exploring the boundaries of the technically possible and the harmonically acceptable.
Raul Da Gama (Latin Jazz Network)
