Piano y trova is not another work in Pepe Rivero’s career. For this versatile pianist and composer, born in eastern Cuba (Manzanillo, 1972), this is his first solo piano album and he pays tribute to the troubadour song of his country, from Pepe Sánchez, the creator of the Latin American bolero, to to the recently disappeared Pablo Milanés. It’s the music he’s been listening to since childhood and has always been part of his emotional landscape and musical essences, and while it’s not the first time he’s interpreted some of these compositions in his jazz repertoire, the concept and form are new. in which he now makes her his.
The adventure of piano and trova began last year when he was invited by Miguel Ángel Marín, director of the music program at the Juan March Foundation, to represent his version and pianistic vision of the Nueva Trova Cubana as part of the song cycle “Classics of Latin America”. and the protest song, with Silvio Rodríguez and Pablo Milanés as the main exponents. Pepe Rivero liked the idea but believed that this movement came from a much broader and earlier phenomenon, namely that of the ancient traditional trova that arose in eastern Cuba after the development of European rhythms and their blending with African rhythms, which they gave birth to the Creole song, performed by the troubadours, or troveros, as they are also known, who combined deep lyrical texts with a very particular cadence in their compositions, which immediately became a genre in their own right.
Rivero first compiled a large selection of songs by major Cuban composers of the late 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century, including the aforementioned Pepe Sánchez, author of Tristeza (1883), and the first bolero, Sindo Garay, Miguel Matamoros , Maria Teresa Vera, Manuel Corona, Nilo Menéndez, Ernesto Lecuona and Eliseo Grenet, among others. Most of these great musicians and troubadours composed their works using the guitar as a creative tool and means of expression, but the importance of songs such as Longina, Veinte años, Olvido or Perla Marina led them to become true icons, of which there are several versions the most diverse formats have become. The challenge for Pepe Rivero was to appropriate the soul of this music and to reconcile it with his classical training as a pianist and the freedom of his jazz language, the keys of his style.
Rivero recalls that since settling in Spain 25 years ago and recording his first four albums for Universal, he has been asked to record a solo piano LP. “I really didn’t feel it, I thought it should be something that comes naturally when I feel it, and for me that was the best justification,” explains this Cuban musician, so unique and dissimilar to his credit is works such as the homages to Thelonius Monk and Chopín (“Monk and the Cuban Rumba” and “Los boleros de Chopin”) or his Yoruba Suite, commissioned by the Sacred Music Festival, to which he dedicates almost a year of his career.
In Piano y Trova, which he believes is the first in a series of solo piano works, Pepe Rivero let himself go. The concert at the Fundación Juan March was a success and from this single recording he later chose the 10 songs that make up this album. “It was very important to me to pay homage to all these great troubadours with the piano and a tradition that I also come from, namely the Trova, they are songs I was born with, grew up with. Of course, I also have a classical education and it was about finding a point between the classical, the traditional and the Cuban piano, which we learned from Manuel Saumell, Ignacio Cervantes, Lecuona and also from Bebo Valdés, from Chucho, from Frank Emilio have inherited. Rubén González, from Peruchín and Felo Bergaza, among many others”.
The result is a suggestive album full of heart that, through the piano, immerses you intensely in the poetry underlying the songs of your life, an album full of nuances that is a treat for the ear and that Rivero conveys the emotions necessary for its creators were a source of inspiration. This is the case of the song that opens the album, “the Sublime Longina”, one of the most beautiful songs of the Cuban trova of all time, composed by one of the greats of the genre on the island and the troubadour with the most lyrics by the name of one Woman in his repertoire, Manuel Corona,” says Rivero, reciting one of his verses from memory, “In the mysterious language of your eyes / There is a song that emphasizes sensitivity / In the sensual lines of your beautiful body / The curves that are admired , awaken illusions…”
He also talks about Aquelos ojos Verdes by Nilo Menéndez and Adolfo Utreras and remembers what Nilo said about the muse that inspired him: “Believing in love at first sight, I fell in love the same day and night in her I composed music; It was her eyes that gave me the sweet theme of my song. It was premiered on June 21, 1930 in Havana by María Cervantes and was one of the first boleros with worldwide success. They can also be found on the album “Ay Mama Ines” by Eliseo Grenet and “Siempre en mi corazón” by Lecuona, “the first song to be nominated for an Oscar in the forties”, notes Pepe Rivero, who started his tour on piano and trova concludes the album Warm and melancholic, Años by Pablo Milanés is a natural bridge between the new and the old Cuban trova, which has always accompanied him in his development as a musician and which has triumphed all over the world. Let’s wait for the next deliveries
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