Alain Pérez: “From Paco de Lucía I learned that we had to try to achieve perfection but also excite” | News from Catalonia | EUROtoday

Attending a live performance by Alain Pérez (Manaca Iznaga, Cuba, 48 years) implies going by an feelings carousel. Graduated in classical guitar by the National School of Art of Cuba, the instrumentalist, arranger, composer and singer, often contact, sing and dance for greater than three hours on stage. In his recitals he travels alongside together with his viewers probably the most conventional genres of his nation, such because the Chachachá, the son or the bolero, to which he provides the overflowing power of the timba and improvisations inherited from jazz. The one who was bassist of Paco de Lucia for a decade, presents for the primary time dwell – alongside together with his compatriot Isaac Delgado – this Saturday within the Apollo room in Barcelona, Bingohis final album. Produced in Cuba, the United States and Spain, work provides to different dance music works equivalent to THE TALE OF THE GOOD PIPE (2020), ADN (2018) o Tea tea: Honor conventional lo, that earned him a Latin Grammy in 2021.

Although reside in Cuba – País who returned in 2018 after 20 years dwelling in Spain – the musician considers Spain as a “second house.” He arrived in Europe as a musician of the Isaac Delgado orchestra in 1998, and labored for 20 years with artists equivalent to Josele, Enrique Morente, Celia Cruz and particularly as bassist of Paco de Lucía, who left him “fascinated by his aura and his character” and who inherited “trying to achieve perfection and exciting the public.”

After his encounter with the guitarist, the composer had flamenco an prompt connection. “I have a good amount of gypsy rods that the patriarchs have given me,” he says with a smile.

After 20 years in Spain, he returned to his island to “transmit my 20 -year experience working in different scenarios of the world and bring all that learning to the new generations,” he says. The orchestra to which it can lead on Europe and situations equivalent to Lincoln Center, composed of 12 musicians from his alma mater, has a mean age of 23 years, and a number of the members have simply fulfilled the age of majority. “I feel in the commitment to continue teaching so that the aesthetics of Cuban music are not lost, it is the second generation of musicians I form,” he explains. Through his expertise he emulates what lecturers like Chucho Valdés did for him, who led him to play in Irakere – some of the vital Latin jazz orchestras in historical past – with solely 17 years: “The sound marked me forever, it was like making a master’s degree ahead of time,” he recollects.

Coming from a household of musicians, it was his father, Gradelio Pérez, with whom he has composed a number of of his songs, the primary who found his innate expertise. “Traditional music stayed in my bowels and I was lucky to start in that direction, with the Guajiro point, the son and the Guaracha,” he says. With 7 years he already sang and performed the guitar, and with 9 years he left his hometown within the route of Cienfuegos to play with Cielito Lindo, his first group. “The same day they tried me I stayed far from my house, since then the music flooded everything, even the shortcomings were replaced by music,” he confesses.

Although on his return the island welcomed him with open arms, his final works have been marked by the issue concerned in a scarcity of electrical energy. “There are energy problems, five -day current collapses, being in the study and having to return home because there is no current, having to suspend recording shifts …”. “Working in that precariousness makes you more sensitive and at the same time stronger,” he says.

The bassist’s preparations and compositions may be heard on the similar time in the very best Jazz faculties in New York and within the streets of Havana. “I look in the mirror of people like Juan Luis Guerra or Rubén Blades, Benny Moré himself made very popular music in the fifties and at the same time were exquisite compositions,” says the musician, who often makes use of in his live shows a cane in homage to Moré, “the barbarian of the rhythm.” His creations start with a melody, which takes form instantly with a guitar or a piano. “The most important thing is that my songs have spirituality, I always put emotions in the foreground,” he says.

His newest album, “the one with greatest maturity,” in keeping with the artist himself, is tormented by conventional Cuban rhythms, to which songs like songs will probably be added It is now not price itcomposed together with his father greater than 20 years in the past and sung with Tito Nieves or others equivalent to Queen of hearts o I used to be alone, With Gilberto Santa Rosa. Among the novelties are the incorporation of his brother, Rainer Pérez, as a composer. In relation to different albums, “there’s a distinction within the degree of manufacturing, love and Curatorship of the songs “, although always,” with lots of supply and lots of ardour. “This Saturday will be the fifth presentation of the bassist in the Apollo room of the Catalan capital:” I feel this time there’s a great phantasm, it is going to be an injection of brutal want and adrenaline, “he concludes.