When she wants to sing jazz, Dianne Reeves has always had the ability to reach the top of her field, but she has long seemed unable to make up her mind between jazz, R&B, world music, and pop. This Blue Note disc fortunately finds her mostly sticking to jazz…

Led by “Better Days,” a huge hit, Dianne Reeves’ self-titled album from 1987 was produced by George Duke and accordingly fluctuates between R&B and jazz. ~ Ron Wynn

Although pianist Chucho Valdés starts things off with a precise and danceable interpretation of Ernesto Lecuona’s “La Comparsa” on New Conceptions, the classical and operatic themes explored on 2002’s Fantasia Cubana: Variations on Classical Themes are largely implied this time around. Valdés is a superb classically trained technician with…

Issued just after his landmark two-week June 1998 gig at the Village Vanguard and subsequent U.S./Canada tour, Chucho Valdés’ first album for Blue Note bears out a lot of the hype surrounding this hugely gifted Cuban pianist. Unlike many of today’s younger Cuban keyboard hotshots, Valdés not only has…

Chucho Valdés comes roaring out of the jewel box again with a stupefying demonstration of piano technique and musical sense allied with a hot-as-sun Cuban rhythm team. In sync with North American preoccupations in 1998 and 1999, this album spends a good deal of time commemorating the centenaries of…

As one of Cuba’s greatest Latin and Afro-Cuban jazz pianists and long an important bandleader, Jesús Chucho Valdés has earned international renown and a devoted audience of jazz fans. However, the imaginative composer and virtuosic improviser does not waiver from his ability to interpret acknowledged classics. Fantasia Cubana: Variations…

Following up on 2000’s ensemble tour de force Live at the Village Vanguard, Blue Note issued this album by Cuban sensation Chucho Valdés — a solo concert recorded live in 1998 at Lincoln Center’s Kaplan Penthouse in New York. Listening to the great pianist in an unaccompanied setting, one…

If Blue Note’s alert microphones were present at Chucho Valdés‘s historic 1998 debut at the hallowed Village Vanguard, the results haven’t officially landed in our CD machines yet. But the mikes were there, alright, the following year — and they caught some virulent Cuban tempests (as the announcer warns, accurately,…

The leader and founder of Irakere, Chucho Valdes is also a brilliant pianist who may be on the same level of Gonzalo Rubalcaba. He has a very impressive classical technique and is able to hint at such players as McCoy Tyner, Lennie Tristano, and Cecil Taylor without watering down…

Eliane Elias returns to the music of her native Brazil with this collection of bossa nova favorites, though there are a few American standards and pop songs recast as bossa novas as well. The pianist has grown in confidence as a vocalist over the course of several CDs, developing…