D'Cuba Jazz

Fecha: 2017.04.24
Fuente: jazzday.com/participate

Bobby Carcassés is a true icon of Cuban music. The grandson of a Cuban diplomat, Carcassés was born in Kingston, Jamaica, and moved with his family back to Cuba at age 4. He started as a vocalist performing opera and Spanish zarzuela, was introduced to popular repertoire while singing in bandleader Bobby Collazo’s vocal quartet, and eventually performed with the renowned Tropicana nightclub act. On his first visit to New York in 1958, the young singer discovered luminaries like Buddy Rich and Machito, igniting his interest in jazz and leading him to take up the trumpet, drums and bass in earnest. A move to Paris in the late 1960s introduced Carcassés to the American jazz greats Bud Powell and Kenny Clarke. Upon returning to Cuba, he founded a group with contemporaries Paquito D’Rivera, Chucho Valdés, Carlos Emilio Morales and Leo Brouwer. In 1980, he organized the inaugural Jazz Plaza Festival. This attracted a host of international artists, including Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie
Haden, Airto Moreira and Tania Maria, to the Cuban music scene. For his work mentoring young Cuban musicians like César López, Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Yosvany Terry and Osmany Paredes, he was dubbed by famed musicologist Leonardo Acosta “the last guru of Cuban jazz.” Carcassés has toured extensively throughout Europe and the U.S. and has released
eight albums, most recently /De La Habana a Nueva York/.