The future is his for the taking.“My culture is strong and varied,” says Fonseca with a smile. Roberto Fonseca releases a new videoclip from his latest album Yesun. Aged 21, he played piano accompaniment to an Italian singer on a tour of Italy. Join Roberto Fonseca https://robertofonseca.lnk.... Kachucha highlights the creative process of apprehension of dance in Cuba, how important it is to dance, move, to let it go. American jazz, taught at school, consumed in between, with Herbie Hancock, Keith Jarrett and Oscar Peterson on rotation. British-based impresario Gilles Peterson asked him to arrange and co-produce the 2010 Havana Cultura project: a double album showcasing the reggaeton, hip-hop, Afro-jazz and more of Cuba’s new musical generation. Yesun combines Fonseca’s strong AfroCuban rhythmic sense with many styles to produce a musical statement that is powerful and imaginative. Having proved himself exceptional (indeed, earlier in 2019 he was awarded the distinguished Ordre des Arts Letters from the French Ministry of Culture), Fonseca is free to take more risks, break new ground, take his music – and the music of Cuba – further. Fonseca has been at the forefront of the renaissance in Cuban music, releasing a catalogue of acclaimed solo albums between joining the legendary Buena Vista Social Club, touring with crooner Ibrahim Ferrer, then with singer Omara Portuondo. His latest, Yesun, is a supremely assured statement that takes the Afro-Cuban stamp on modern jazz as a … Fonseca’s music was sought after for upmarket advertising campaigns.
Listen to OO by Roberto Fonseca - Yesun. Two years in the making, as kaleidoscopic and multi-layered as Cuba itself (“My culture is so strong and varied that the possibilities are endless”), ABUC was released in the same year that Fonseca became Artistic Director of the Inaugural Jazz Plaza Festival in Santiago de Cuba – the sister event of the festival that welcomed his live solo debut 26 years previously.Alongside the recording and collaborating, the practicing and composing, are Fonseca’s headline live appearances. Funk and soul. Music made in Africa and Brazil. Travel through Havana’s streets with the song “oo”. “I’m building bridges between my AfroCuban roots and other styles of music and doing some of the things I love doing live.” “La llamada” (‘The Call’), finds Fonseca playing with purpose and direction.
AfroCuban music with passion and purpose, that’s the short of it! Fonseca’s seamless flow between tradition and forward leaning sounds is impressive. His tastes were always eclectic: hard rock, for its energy and basslines. Iconic French designer Agnes B began kitting him out in sharp suits and his trademark leather Byblos hats in 2006 (“We share ideas, concepts”).
The composition is well-written with interesting tempo changes and the outstanding all female vocal quartet, Gema 4. A live album, 2015’s At Home, was also recorded at the Jazz in Marciac festival. His two elder half-brothers are a drummer and a percussionist; the young Roberto was four-years-old when he started playing drums – his first professional gig was in a Beatles cover band – before taking up piano aged eight. 9:35. He has been composing his own music since adolescence.His technique is as percussive and muscular as it is agile and delicate. The international spotlight shone bright in 2001 when Fonseca joined that famed ensemble of elderly maestros, the Buena Vista Social Club, taking over the piano chair from the ailing Ruben Gonzalez (1919 – 2003) then touring the globe with singer Ibrahim Ferrer (1927 – 2005) then with BVSC alumni including evergreen diva Omara Portuondo.After co-producing and playing on Ferrer’s posthumously released Mi Sueño: A Bolero Songbook (2006), Fonseca unleashed his landmark 2007 jazz-roots solo album Zamazu. 2016’s ABUC (“***** Incandescent Cuban contrasts” – The Guardian) told the story of Cuban music past, present and future with a sprawling cast of over 30 guests. His show is scheduled on July 11th at 12am. Released on Wagram on 18 October 2019, and featuring guests including Grammy-winning saxophonist Joe Lovano, lauded French-Lebanese trumpeter Ibrahim Maalouf and rising star Cuban rapper Danae Suarez alongside retro-modern keyboards, electronic beats and samples and those earthy AfroCuban rhythms, Yesun is the album that Fonseca has always wanted to make. Hailed as sensual and modern, as strongly spiritual and crazily trailblazing, Zamazu’s audacious vision involved 20 guest collaborators and augured a glittering future. Watch and listen Roberto Fonseca perform alongside each other in this first ever global broadcast. He went on to graduate with a Masters degree in Composition from the prestigious Institute Superior del Arte, determined to focus outward while staying true to his AfroCuban core. “Writing the track ’7 Rayos’ was life-changing for me,” says Fonseca. His 2007 album The compositions present a varied sound from song to song and the guest artist are excellent. Along the way he has achieved the aim with which he began his professional career in the early 1990s: “Wherever people are, I want them to hear my music and say, ‘This is Roberto Fonseca’.” An artist of prowess and ideas, with a questing jazz sensibility and deep roots in the Afro-Cuban tradition, Fonseca continues to astound. Montuno Producciones © 2020 all rights reservedRoberto Fonseca is a Cuban pianist, vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, composer, producer and bandleader. He composed the soundtrack for Black, a film by French director P. Maraval, and produced an album for hip-hop act Obsesión. Cuban pianist and composer Roberto Fonseca has been a force to reckon with since he was a teenager, and it has been 20 years since he released his first album.
But I mixed all these elements, created a bridge and loved the result.