CHUCHO VALDÉS

Royal Quartet

BIOGRAPHY

Cuban pianist, composer, arranger, and bandleader Chucho Valdés, one of the most influential figures in modern Afro-Cuban jazz, was named a 2025 National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master. As noted in the NEA announcement, the distinction celebrates “a select number of living legends who have made exceptional contributions to the advancement of jazz.”

The NEA Jazz Masters Fellowship is the highest honor the United States bestows on jazz artists.

The recognition crowns a 60-year career that includes seven GRAMMY®, six Latin GRAMMY® Awards, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Latin Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, and being inducted into the Latin Songwriters Hall of Fame.

Meanwhile, Mr. Valdés, 83, keeps creating, still curious and restless.

In September 2024, he presented yet another brilliant ensemble, the Royal Quartet, featuring three generations of top Cuban musicians, including Horacio “El Negro” Hernández on drums; José A. Gola, bass; and Roberto Jr. Vizcaíno, percussion. The release of Cuba & Beyond (Innercat Music Group), which earned a Grammy nomination, marked the 60-year anniversary of Mr. Valdés’s recording debut, Jazz Nocturno (Areito, 1964).

Cuba & Beyond also served as a bookend for a year in which Valdés celebrated one of his most important achievements with Chucho Valdés: Irakere 50, a tribute to Irakere, the Cuban band he co-founded and led for more than three decades. With its bold fusion of Afro-Cuban ritual music, Cuban popular styles, jazz, rock, and classical music, Irakere opened new paths for Latin jazz.

The historic Irakere 50 concert at the Arsht Center in Miami in February 2024, which brought together Mr. Valdés and two Irakere mainstays: reedman and composer Paquito D’Rivera and trumpeter, multi-instrumentalist, and composer Arturo Sandoval, was a highlight of the tour.

The evening was a special moment in the celebration of Mr. Valdés’s reunion with D’Rivera, his old friend and musical co-conspirator. Their paths perged in the 1980s, and since, they rarely played together. But in January 2022, the old friends recorded the album I Missed You Too and embarked on a tour with their Reunion Sextet that took them throughout Europe and the United States. I Missed You Too won a Latin Grammy for Best Latin Jazz Album.

Any list of notable events in Mr. Valdés’s career in recent years must underscore the world premiere of “La Creación” (The Creation), a three-movement suite for a small ensemble, voices, and a big band at the Adrianne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County, on November 5, 2021. The piece was commissioned by the Arsht Center, the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, the Chicago Symphony Center, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association. Following the premiere, “La Creación” was performed throughout the U.S. and Europe, including concerts at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City, the Detroit Jazz Festival in Detroit, MI; the Monterey Jazz Festival in Monterey, CA; the Philharmonie de Paris and in Barcelona, Spain.

Born in a family of musicians in Quivicán, Havana province, Cuba, on October 9, 1941, Dionisio Jesús “Chucho” Valdés Rodríguez has distilled elements of the Afro-Cuban music tradition, jazz, classical music, and rock into an organic, deeply personal style.

His first teacher was his father, the pianist, composer, and bandleader Ramón “Bebo” Valdés. At the age of three, Mr. Valdés was already playing on the piano, with two hands, and in any key, the melodies he heard on the radio. He began taking lessons on piano, theory, and solfege at the age of five. He later studied at the Conservatorio Municipal de Música de la Habana, from which he graduated at 14. A year later, Mr. Valdés formed his first jazz trio. In 1959, when he was just 18, Mr. Valdés debuted professionally with the band Sabor de Cuba, a large ensemble directed by his father.

Fittingly, Mr. Valdés made his early mark as the co-founder, pianist, and leading composer and arranger of another landmark ensemble in modern Cuban music: the small big band Irakere (1973-2005). Irakere’s self-titled debut recording in the United States won a Grammy as Best Latin Recording in 1979.

While he remained with Irakere until 2005, Mr. Valdés launched a parallel career in 1998 as a solo performer and small-group leader. It marked the beginning of a fruitful period highlighted by albums such as Solo Piano (Blue Note, 1991), Solo: Live in New York (Blue Note, 2001), as well as quartet recordings such as Bele Bele en La Habana (Blue Note, 1998), Briyumba Palo Congo (Blue Note, 1999), New Conceptions (Blue Note, 2003), and Live at the Village Vanguard (Blue Note, 2000), which won a Grammy for Best Latin Jazz Album.

As a solo artist, after leaving Irakere, Mr. Valdés also won Grammys for Juntos Para Siempre (Calle 54, 2007), the moving duet recording with his father, Bebo, and Chucho’s Steps (Comanche, 2010), featuring his Afro-Cuban Messengers.

In 2015, Mr. Valdés celebrated the 40th anniversary of the birth of Irakere with a world tour and a recording, Tribute to Irakere: Live at Marciac (Jazz Village / Comanche Music), which won a Grammy for Best Latin Jazz Album in 2016. He followed this with Jazz Batá 2 (Mack Avenue, 20

18), a belated follow-up to his innovative 1972 piano jazz trio album featuring batá drums in place of the standard drum kit. The recording won a Latin Grammy.

: Cuba & Beyond Chucho Valdés & Royal Quartet

: I Missed You Too! Chucho Valdés & Paquito D' Rivera

: JAZZ BATA 2 Chucho Valdés

: ONCE Concierto para dos PATRICIA SOSA & CHUCHO VALDÉS

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MUSIC

Folow

TOUR

NEWS

CHUCHO VALDÉS & PAQUITO D’RIVERA REUNION SEXTET

The history of the close friendship and shared musical adventures between pianist and composer Chucho Valdés and saxophonist, clarinetist, and composer Paquito D’Rivera goes back 60 years. But in recent decades, their paths rarely crossed.

Chucho and Paquito are now making up for lost time with a new album,I Missed You Too, and a world tour.In their reunion, they are accompanied by an extraordinary ensemble. It includes Diego Urcola on trumpet and valve trombone, Armando Gola on contrabass and electric bass, Dafnis Prieto on drums, and Roberto Jr. Vizcaino on percussion. The selected repertoire includes old hits, some of them already Latin Jazz standards, classics of the Latin American repertoire, and new compositions.

“I’m very proud of this reunion,” said Paquito, in a conversation after a rehearsal at Chucho’s home. “Chucho is part of my life. His father was very close friends with my father. Our friendship is something that goes back a long way. The first song Chucho wrote that became famous was called ‘Indestructible.’ That’s our relationship: indestructible”.

For his part, Chucho celebrated the reunion as “one of the happiest days of my life.”

“I’ve missed him,” Chucho continued. “Paquito is part of my life. I played with his father, Tito, a great saxophonist, before I played with him. Paquito is family, and he’s very important to me musically. There are many great musicians, but Paquito is unique.”

The awards, the honors, the shelves full of recognitions only tell part of the story of these great musicians.

Chucho Valdés and Paquito D’Rivera have accumulated more than 25 Grammys and Latin Grammys. But numbers do not give the proper measure of their musical contributions, together or individually.

They began their musical partnership as members of the Musical Theater Orchestra in Havana, and the fabled all-star Orquesta Cubana de Musica Moderna (Cuban Orchestra of Modern Music). From then on, they were musically inseparable (Paquito made his first professional recording on Chucho’s first album: Jesús Valdés y su Combo).

In 1973, Chucho founded the small big band Irakere, which played a powerful fusion of jazz, classical, rock, and Afro-Cuban music. It was a transcendental development in Latin Jazz. Paquito, an original member of the group, was a key figure.

“Paquito was the heart of Irakere,” said Chucho.

In 1980, Paquito went into exile in Madrid. Soon after, he moved to New York and began a new life there. Chucho remained with Irakere, but in 1998, seeking more opportunities for his talents as a pianist, he embarked on a parallel career, leading small groups and appearing solo. In 2005, Chucho finally left Irakere. For years, he lived between Havana and Malaga, where his late father, the great pianist and bandleader Bebo Valdés, had settled. In 2010, Chucho and his family moved to South Florida.

Much has happened in their musical lives since the days of Irakere.

Chucho reinvented himself, leading trios and quartets and becoming a solo pianist. Last October 9, he celebrated his 80th birthday by working on La Creación, a three-movement suite for small ensemble, voices, and big band. The work had its world premiere on November 5 at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts in Miami and was later performed in Lyon, Paris, and Barcelona.

For his part, Paquito developed a successful career as a bandleader and composer. In 2005, his work earned him recognition as a Jazz Master from the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts. But Paquito also maintained his passion for classical music, receiving a Guggenheim Fellowship and commissions for string quartets, chamber groups, and symphony orchestras. Five of his orchestral works will be premiered this year.

These days, Chucho and Paquito have turned their attention to their reunion, an event that carries a deep meaning for them, both musically and personally.

“You don’t have to be [physically] close to a person to feel close,” Paquito said, reflecting on the years in which the old friends did not see each other. “Heck, there are people who are married and don’t have such a close relationship. We were born to be close, even at a distance.”

Sitting next to him, Chucho listened with a faint smile and nodded silently.

“I’ve always had the hope of being close to Paquito again and playing with him again,” he said. “I’ve always had that hope. Well, this is our moment.”

Chucho Valdés, considered the most influential figure of modern Afro-Cuban jazz, goes on a world tour featuring concerts with American jazz greats Dianne Reeves and Joe Lovano, evenings of solo piano, intimate shows with his Chucho Valdés quartet, and the debut of an Afro-Cuban suite performed by two dozen musicians.

The Cuban pianist, composer and arranger, celebrates his 80th birthday with the
world premiere of “La Creación”, “The Creation”, at the Adrienne Arscht Center in Miami on November 5th, 2021.

It uses many of the chants that are sung to the different saints in the Yoruban
language, and some in Spanish, fused with jazz, with African music, with pure Caribbean rhythms and with the blues.

“La Creación” is played, also in November, at the Philharmonie de Paris, and at the Barcelona Jazz Festival.

“I think this is my most important musical work ever because it brings together everything that I’ve learned in my life, and this is the ideal moment for its debut. It goes much deeper than anything I’ve done up until now”.