El guao irakere biography

Despite a fine booklet essay that traces the band's importance and its success there is no biographical and discographical information contained in the package.
Irakere was born for jazz and popular dance music, well defined both fields of action from the same starting point.
Founded in 1973 by Chucho Valdes (son of the Cuban pianist and bandleader Bebo Valdes) the group was home to many of Cuba's finest musicians over the years.

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Julián Graciano, learn music from the family roots, great-harpist, guitarist grandfather and his father tango bandoneon player, nucleus where takes his upbringing in a musical environment.

In parallel to his schooling, his first formal knowledge incorporates hand of Professor Carlos Esteban, who guides him on solfege and music theory.

Gets the scholarship BEST (Berklee Entering Student Talented) at age 19 and MEFA scholarship

(Massachusetts Educational Financial Authority).

Through these achievements pursuing higher studies at the famed Berklee

College of Music, Boston USA where it has the ability to perform

harmony and improvisation masterclass with Gary Burton, Chucho

Valdez and Bob Mintzer; jazz guitar with John Scofield, Mike Stern, Pat Martino and latin jazz with Carlos Moreno (Irakere); polyrhythms and rhythmic concepts with Horacio "El black" Hernandez and Steve Smith; composition with Jim Reyes and Alf Clausen, among others.

He has taught the guitar chair, musical analysis and repertoire at the Conservatory Argentino Galván and teacher of Liceo Superior d

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A Sea Change?

Alex Masucci felt burned out on the Latin music business--until he had a revelation in Havana.

As a record producer and former vice president of fabled Fania Records, the New York salsa label founded by his late brother Jerry, Masucci, 51, had worked with or observed every major salsa act of the past 30 years, from Ruben Blades to Marc Anthony. But when his brother died unexpectedly in 1997, so did their plans for a big comeback of the legendary label.

Dejected, Masucci traveled two years later to Cuba, where Fania had made its final deals dabbling in the island’s rich contemporary dance music. He went there, he thought, just to wrap up loose ends for his brother’s business.

Then one evening, at the midnight show at Havana’s hip basement club Cafe Cantante, the veteran record man suddenly got that old salsa fever again. As he walked downstairs, he felt drawn by that magical sound of something completely new.

Masucci had stumbled across the hottest young band on the hottest salsa scene since the Fania All Stars exploded on Manhattan in the ‘70s. The music of Carl

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Chucho Valdés & Irakere: A 2-CD Retrospective

At the time of writing this critique this recording will have been almost three years old. However, the music of the celebrated Brasilian artist Milton “Bituca” Nascimento is timeless. And so, indeed, is any music created and produced by the prodigiously gifted Clarice Assad, third generation of a fabled Brasilian musical family. So, the statute of limitations ceases to apply to this recording Window to the World – A Tribute to Milton Nascimento.

I would wager a guess that among living Brasilian musicians no musician has received more recorded tributes than the inimitable Mr Nascimento. The word ‘legendary,’ though often bandied about when it comes to Brasilian musicians – alive or no longer alive – has little meaning. Miles Davis rightly scorned the term saying that it only belonged ‘to dead cats.’ But few Brasilians alive today deserve it – even among such stellar lights as Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso, and Ivan Lins. Mr Nascimento [and perhaps Chico Buarque, Hermeto Pascoal and Egberto Gismonti – each for vari