Cuban musicians have been dispersed around the world for more than half a century while seeking freedom and opportunity, but the family-like ties binding them together endure.
Those ties and brilliant music will be on hand when SFJAZZ kicks off its Summer Sessions with a block of Cuban programming, including a stylistically diverse array of artists encompassing classical music, traditional Afro-Cuban idioms and jazz. The musicians share relationships going back generations.
Carrying the pre-revolutionary musical torch reignited by the Buena Vista Social Club album and documentary in the mid-1990s, Juan de Marcos and the Afro-Cuban All-Stars headline the Cuban Music Week with four SFJAZZ Center shows July 11-14. De Marcos was the talent scout and music director for the Ry Cooder-produced sessions, and as the older Buena Vista players passed from the scene his 13-piece group has played a leading role in keeping popular styles of the 1940s and ‘50s, like bolero, danzón and son, on international stages.
“I write all the music for the band,” said de Marcos, 70, on a recent video call from his home in Maryland, where he’s lived for the past decade. “I select the repertoire, write all the arrangements, and mix my own compositions with jewels of Afro-Cuban music. We rehearse four or five days before we go on the road because everybody lives in different places, New York, Miami, Vegas.”
The All-Stars feature largely the same cast of players who’ve been in the band for the past five years, including de Marcos’ wife, percussionist and band manager Gliceria Abreu Caron (though their two daughters no longer tour with the group). He noted one major change is that for the first time the band includes a musician not born in Cuba. Indeed, New York City timbalero Caleb Michel’s parents hail from Mexico and the Dominican Republic.
Always ready to bring Cuban music to new venues, de Marcos collaborated with Lin-Manuel Miranda on the 2021 animated musical “Vivo,” voicing a main character and handling lead vocals on the song “One of a Kind.” More recently, he brought Cuban music to Off Broadway with “Buena Vista Social Club,” a musical based on the 1996 project with a script by Cuban American playwright Marco Ramirez. The production moves to Broadway in November.
“I respect very much the work he has done, especially promoting our traditional Cuban music,” said piano virtuoso Aldo López-Gavilán, who plays four shows July 12-13 at SFJAZZ Center and a concert on July 23 in Campbell Recital Hall as part of the Stanford Jazz Festival. “He’s a great musician and arranger and knows the roots. But beyond that, the way he has become a big success rescued this great music that had faded in Cuba and around the world.”
A classical music prodigy from an illustrious musical clan, López-Gavilán performed at Zellerbach Hall in 2022 when Cal Performances presented him with his brother, Harlem Quartet violinist Ilmar Gavilán, as part of a tour marking the siblings’ reunion after decades divided by lingering Cold War barriers. Their separation and eventual collaboration was the subject of the 2020 documentary “Los Hermanos/The Brothers” by award-winning Bay Area filmmakers Ken Schneider and Marcia Jarmel.
For López-Gavilán, the reunion “was awesome, after waiting for so long before we could play here in the U.S., doing this long tour not only as a duet but with Harlem Quartet,” he said. “It was very intimate for us. It’s my music mostly, and some of my arrangements. Ilmar understood just what I wanted but he’d change a lot of stuff too, and I could say nothing about it.”
Rounding out SFJAZZ’s Cuban programing is Jorge Luis Pacheco, who performs two Joe Henderson Lab shows July 11. Winner of the 2014 Montreux Jazz Piano Solo Competition, he’s a spectacular musician who, like López-Gavilán, is equally versed in Afro-Cuban, modern jazz and European classical traditions.
López-Gavilán refers to his younger colleague as Pachequito, and notes that as family friends they’ve known each other since birth. “His mother is a choral conductor and I was in the choral world,” López-Gavilán said.
“We have performed many times together, including a piano duo at a few festivals in Miami and the Kennedy Center. He’s a brilliant young musician, not only a pianist. He likes to sing, and he can do a lot with that. I’m very happy we’re going to meet again in San Francisco.”
While busy touring schedules have kept López-Gavilán and de Marcos from spending much time together over the years, they also share familial ties.
“His dad is a friend of mine,” de Marcos said, referring to esteemed Havana composer and conductor Guido López-Gavilán. “My daughter is a conductor, and his father was her professor.”
Contact Andrew Gilbert at jazzscribe@aol.com.
AFRO-CUBAN ALL-STARS
When & where: 7:30 p.m. July 11-13, 3 p.m. July 14; SFJAZZ Center, San Francisco; $35-$125; www.sfjazz.org
Jorge Luis Pacheco: 7 and 8:30 p.m. July 11; SFJAZZ Center, San Francisco; $30; www.sfjazz.org
Aldo Lopez-Gavilian: 7 and 8:30 p.m. July 12-13 at SFJAZZ Center, San Francisco; $30; www.sfjazz.org; 7:30 p.m. July 23 at Stanford Jazz Festival, Campbell Recital Hall; $62; stanfordjazz.org