The third concert of this season in UtahPresents’ jazz series turns the spotlight on two Cuban-born musicians who came from the legendary musical pedagogy of their homeland: Alfredo Rodriguez and Pedrito Martinez. Discovered by his mentor Quincy Jones at the Montreux Jazz Festival, Rodriguez studied at the classical music conservatory in Havana, mastering keyboard works and compositional techniques by Bach and Stravinsky that eventually extended to Afro-Cuban jazz and rhythmic languages. The concert will take place Feb. 6 at 7:30 p.m. in Kingsbury Hall at the University of Utah.
In an interview with The Utah Review, Rodriguez talked about how broadly available paths are for people, regardless of whether they studied at a conservatory or cultivated their experiences through the sounds, songs and dance music they heard in the streets or heard from their parents. In Rodriguez’s case, he was the son of Alfredo Rodriguez Sr., a renowned singer from Cuba, who died a couple of weeks ago in the U.S.
His father died at the age of 74, the day before Rodriguez’s new album dropped and the start of the tour which will make its Salt Lake City stop on Friday.In a social media tribute to his father, the son wrote, “”Fly high, Dad. You were true to your music, to your audience, to your principles, to your ideals, to your roots, and most importantly, to our family,” he wrote. “Thank you for inspiring and motivating me to be a better person every day and to fight for my dreams, no matter how high the obstacles may sometimes be.”
In a 2017 interview with The Utah Review, shortly before he appeared at the Utah Arts Festival that year, Martinez talked about the batá rhythms he learned originated in Africa, once performed only for kings. The performer on the largest drum, the instrument referred to as the mother of the batá drums, leads the musical dialogue, calling out the changes in performance. In solos, the percussionist puts on a magnificent display of percussion art – a full range of improvisational effects achieved by the ways in which he places the strokes with hands, palms and fingers as well as the force he strikes on the drum.
In the Afro-Cuban cultural diaspora that now stretches to the U.S., Rodriguez and Martinez and many of his fellow musicians who were born and raised in Cuba exemplify a virtuosic tradition. In Cuba, young aspiring musicians had two pathways available to them to develop and perfect their art. Either they were fortunate enough, by virtue of their family connections, to be sent to one of the country’s legendary conservatories or they learned it in the streets from elders and peers, many of whom were adherents to Santeria, the religion that evolved as slaves were brought from Nigeria to the Caribbean nation more than 250 years ago.
When it comes to music and dance, Rodriguez said that Cuban people “really have it in their blood.” Likewise, many Cubans have an innate sense of rhythm which showcases their virtuosity when it comes to contrapuntal motion in their music; the facility that drummers and percussionists have with complex rhythmic patterns that overlay one another. Rodriguez and Martinez met at Montreux and their first collaboration was on Rodriguez’s 2012 release Invasion Parade, which brought the pianist his first Grammy nomination.
Martinez also was featured on some tracks on Rodriguez’s second album, in 2014, which included the song El Güije, with jazz vocalist Esparanza Spalding. While Rodriguez and Martinez maintain packed schedules with their respective projects, they have found time for performing as a duo. On Jan. 23, their newest album, ¡Take Cover!, dropped with their unique arrangements of songs that many will immediately recognize: The Final Countdown, Hotel California, I Wish, Barbie Girl and themes from Mission Impossible, The Pink Panther and Chariots of Fire and Latin standards such as La Comparsa, Oye Como Va, Entre Dos Aguas and La Cucaracha.
The Salt Lake City concert promises to be jaw-droppingly kinetic, with Rodriguez’s blazing keyboard technique and Martinez’s four-conga set up, with the drummer sitting on an canon, with two crashes above, a snare to the left, a set of bongos to the right, a hi-hat on the left foot and a cow bell on the right foot.