Chucho Valdés goes on a world tour featuring concerts with American jazz greats Dianne Reeves and Joe Lovano

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”.

Besides six Grammy Awards and four Latin Grammy ‘s, Chucho Valdes has received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Latin Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. His name is in the Hall of Fame of Latin Composers.

Along a more than 60 years long career as a soloist of his orchestras, Chucho Valdes has learned how to blend to perfection, the elements from traditional afro-cuban music, with jazz, classic music, and rock n’roll, all with a very personal style.

Valdés keeps on with his classes at his virtual academy of music, Academia
Chucho Valdés, www.chuchovaldesacademy.com, a channel dedicated to share his knowledge of Cuban music and afro-cuban jazz, through individual classes taught by Zoom.
Before becoming a full-time piano performer, composer and arranger, Chucho had studied to become a teacher. His admiration for his uncle Emilio, who became an important educator in Cuba, and his early vocation, fulfilled his early years.
But then came the music, and the chance to perform together with the orchestra of his father, the great pianist Bebo Valdés. His long lasting career started there, stepping up to the highest.