Valdes’ Band Shows Off Joyous, First-Rate Music-Making

It may have only been a one-night gig, but the appearance of Jesus “Chucho” Valdes and his band Irakere at Catalina Bar & Grill on Monday was hands-down, without-a-doubt, the most exciting jazz performance of the year so far.

Why? Because Valdes and his talented Cuban players have never forgotten such essential, but often overlooked, performance elements as humor, spontaneity and communication. And they’ve mixed them together with astonishing rhythmic energy, first-rate improvisational creativity and brilliant ensemble togetherness.

Valdes and Irakere’s program at the Playboy Jazz Festival Sunday revealed some traces of nervousness on the part of the players in their first U.S. tour in nine years and was hampered by Valdes’ failure to showcase his remarkable piano skills. Further, the sound and energy in the wide-open spaces of the Hollywood Bowl are never the same as they are in the comparatively more intimate confines of a nightclub.

But Irakere, playing before a jam-packed, stand-up-and-shout crowd at Catalina, came alive, used its supercharged, highly focused, collective sound and its direct contact with the audience to spin out an object demonstration in the sheer joy of making music.

The 12-piece ensemble--with three horns, three drummers, three vocalists, bass, guitar and Valdes on piano--was never less than electrifying, fully justifying Valdes’ recent comment that it was the finest band he’s ever had. More than that, it seemed capable of doing anything Valdes demanded of it. And he demanded a lot.

The set was filled with complex horn passages, voiced to somehow sound much larger than a three-piece section, and performed without a single page of music in front of the players. The three-man percussion section was astonishing, moving with nonchalant ease from brisk ensemble rhythms to complex, multilayered, interactivity.

Above all, every musician was a first-rate soloist. Alto and soprano saxophonist Cesar Lopez’s showcase romp through “Las Margaritas,” for example, was a performance that could stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the efforts of the vastly more publicized American young lions, like Joshua Redman.

Most important of all, Valdes was at his best, commanding his musicians from his position at the piano with an occasional hand signal, but mostly directing the proceedings with brisk rhythmic cues. In one of the encore pieces, he challenged each of the musicians with a spontaneous musical phrase, with the players obligated to answer with their own variation.

Yes, the performance had its show-biz aspects. But it typified everything that was right about Irakere, a band that can play irresistible dance music as well as powerful jazz, a band that has managed the difficult task of retaining a solid foundation of creativity beneath the amiable external charms of its music.