'No Escape' at London Soho Jazz Express
By Robert C. Diaz

It was a great privilege for me to be present at the concert of the great Cuban jazz pianist Ramon Valle and his trio in London's Soho Jazz Express.

The concert was entitled 'No Escape' and this is also the name of his latest album from ACT Records. There was a terrific atmosphere and sense of anticipation amongst the audience in the Jazz Pizza Express in the heart of Soho.

Both the concert and album displayed the integrated level piece by piece, through harmonies and counterpoints. It was like an inner-light trip within a musician who travels to his reality through his creative process, beyond the banal commercial musical market and his personal circumstances.

When Ramon played some pieces such as: 'El vigia' (The watchover), 'Andar por dentro' (Walking inside), 'Ilegal' (Illegal) and 'Pesadilla' (Nightmare), the audience could appreciate the deep feelings evoked through his fingers and his fine pianist temperament. Both, as solos as in a Trio format, Ramon Valle's Trio kept on this line, presenting a very professional performance in a concert which constituted two parts of fifty minutes each.

In some pieces such as 'De vuelta a casa' (Come in home), 'Fourty Degrees', 'Alice Blues', 'Clouds', and 'Brindemos' (Cheers), he could bring out his versatile and sometimes ironic talent as a fabulous composer. In all of these, it was funny to see how he could have portrayed a subtle, thin layer according to Cuban's psychology.

Musically, Ramon's compositions have fusion with a new concept of some kind of 'light' danzon, a mature, syncopated bolero, united to a contextual and contemporary vision of experimental tunes into the Jazz scene, with a progressive magic touch of Afro Cuban rhythms.

The concert reached its climax when Ramon introduced to the audience a delightful couple of themes: 'Viva Coltrane' and 'Kimbara pa' Nico'. The first one, as its title says, is a delicate motive, in which he was inspired trying to feedback the 'Coltranemania', through a very old and traditional southern Spanish song.

Here, the astonishing 'Trane's soprano sax (from the original version) was recreated through a spectacular three minutes solo, in which Ramon exhibited a world-class digitization with his right hand. Actually, Coltrane's version is like playing the original in a free-jazz style. However, in this one, Ramon has taken it from the jazz tune and brought it back to the original, recreating some arabesque motives sampled with other Mediterranean genre.

He reserved 'Kimbara pa' Ñico' to close the concert. It is a funny counterpoint dedicated as a tribute to Ñico Saquito, one of the greatest popular Cuban composers ever. Ramon made a syncopated piano rumba of 'Cuidaito Compay Gallo' version, a sarcastic Cuban guaracha rhythm and the audience went crazy.

There is no doubt that the 'No Escape' concert was, in itself, a Jazz Clinic seen through the hands of one of the top high-rank jazz piano players. It captured a fantastic compilation of eleven gorgeous masterpieces, composed by Ramon.

Most of them carry on his Cuban musical legacy, and his personal musical view about the new tendencies in the contemporary jazz scene, combining pain and happiness, in part from his own immigrant status, after more than a decade living in Amsterdam.

According to his classical piano dominion, this concert could be classified as a pure Jazz transition integrated under classical living thematic, coming from the traditional jazz standards to a syncopated Afro Cuban polyrhythmic.

The excellent comprehension, exhibited between these three musicians playing in an acoustic format, converged in a beautiful instrumental dialogue during the whole concert. Omar Rodriguez Calvo (on Double Bass), full of imagination, was able to colour the syncopated breath left by the piano's left hand, with an outstanding 'swing', as in his introductory standards in his solos 'descargas'.

The marvellous drummer, Liber Torrientes (a new revelation of Cuban percussion) and whom Ramon, has considered, like the real point of flavour within the trio, performed amazingly. With this 'extra-class' line-up together with a Cuban classical and piano virtuoso, as Ramon Valle is, playing his own music, using the jazz context and its musical possibilities, the concert was terrific.

At the end, I heard Kyle Moore (an Australian musical professor) whisper behind the shoulder of this reporter: 'Wow, What a concert, man!' Left: Ramon Valle in action on the piano.

 

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