Michele Rosewoman’s music celebrates Cuba

Pianist/composer Michele Rosewoman‘s infatuation with Cuban music goes back to her days growing up on the West Coast, in Oakland, where she had been studying piano since a child and, as she got older, veered into the jazz field.

“I was already deeply immersed in jazz when I walked into a class on African percussion. I was about 18 or 19 years old,” said Rosewoman recently from her home in New York City, the place she moved to in 1978 and never looked back. “That was the birth of my musical path. I didn’t realize it then those two worlds would come together so strongly. But I began pursuing both equally. It became my true passion.”

She carved out a strong career in jazz, playing with many of the best musicians on the scene. She is an outstanding pianist and a bright, creative composer. She leads a top-flight jazz quintet, Quintessence, but her attachment to Cuban music remains.

A few decades ago she formed a group called New Yor-Uba, a name combining the city where she lives with the country whose music she so admires. They play an amalgam of authentic Cuban folkloric music and her own contemporary jazz creations. The band went on hiatus for a while, but a couple years ago resurfaced with her 2013 double CD “New Yor-Uba: A Musical Celebration of Cuba in America”(Advance Dance Disques), produced 30 years after New Yor-Uba was formed.

The recording was much acclaimed, including being named the top Latin jazz album of 2013 by NPR. Touring with that group has taken up much of the pianist’s time ever since (including slaying the audience at the Lake George Jazz Festival in the fall of 2014). On Saturday, she will bring the 12-piece band to The Egg in Albany to perform.

The music, with its heavy percussion, horns and Cuban vocals and chants, has a special effect on the audience.

“It’s unique,”she said. “It’s way beyond me. It’s the energy of the roots of the music, the folklore. The particular depth of the bata drums and what they can do. It’s pretty mind-blowing to most people who see and hear it,” she said, acknowledging that combining it with her own jazz sensibilities helps ease listeners into the music, even when lyrics are Cuban.

“Something about the way music is presented and its very nature makes it not matter if you understand the words or what the implications are. Ultimately, it’s an integration of two beautiful worlds of music, and when they come together right, they have an ability to touch in a deep way.”

One thing people will hear at The Egg is the U.S. premier of her composition “Alabanza,” which she was commissioned to write for the Arturo O’Farrill Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra. She traveled with the band to Cuba in December, where it was first performed. It was recorded there and will be part of O’Farrill’s next album, “Cuba: The Conversation Continued,” to be released later in the year.

Rosewoman said she plans to revive Quintessence this year, noting the music of that group influences New Yor-Uba, and vice versa. Her love of Cuban music heightened when she arrived in New York years ago.

“I got here and found my community. I started literally dreaming the music. I started hearing the folklore in a temporary jazz setting,” she said.

The music she refers to isn’t Cuban pop or music many people know from that island. The influences came from Orlando “Puntilla” Rios, a percussionist she met who was a mentor for many. “He wanted to share his knowledge. He really needed to inform others, so that he could have folks around here to help him execute his own vision. He shared a lot of knowledge that had been very private. A lot of it was not public before. It was more cult-like in terms of those that were deep into those traditions and had access to them.”

Rios became a close associate and then a featured member of her ensemble. Rosewoman built music around the keys that he sang in and the material that he had. In developing the project, she proposed it for an NEA grant, which she received. The band was born and met with success through the years.

More recently, Rosewoman was considering a solo piano recording when a friend urged her to record New Yor-Uba.

“A light went on,” she recalled. “I said, ‘He is so right.’ ”

Rosewoman said there are many good forms of Latin music and what constitutes Latin jazz. “I know people in the jazz world feel very connected to Brazil. For myself, the connection has always been Cuba. Above and beyond anything else. Almost to the point of shamefully not enough interest in others,” she says light- heartedly.

“I could spend my life just studying these traditions. I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface. I know quite a bit, and I barely know anything.

“That’s how deep it goes. I feel like I need a bunch of lifetimes for all that I want to do in terms of my various arenas of interest … I also love funk and R&B. I come from that, in terms of coming up in Oakland. The Motown sound and everything that was going on at the time. That’s in the music too.

“For me it’s natural to pursue a music where all those things meet. I’m hearing it that way, so that’s the way I write it.”

Rosewoman has been very focused on writing new music in recent months. “I’m going to come back out with Quintessence and write a lot of new music for both New Yor-Uba and Quintessence,” she said. “That’s going to be my focus. I’m excited about things to come, as well as the things that are happening right now.”

Photo: Leyko

(From: Times Union)