专辑简介

As Blue Heron Records CEO and project designer and producer, I am supercharged with excitement and eagerly looking forward to sharing with you, through the music, the exciting elements of a long-held dream of mine that is, at last, entering the process of transformation to reality. The dream of recording a collection of authentic Latin music first began to reveal itself in the 1980s, as my passion deepened for Latin music and it’s influence began to merge with my jazz pianist identity. I worked every El Paso, Texas Latin gig I could find in those days, and learned many romantic Latin standards and studied the rhythms.

I spent years mystified about why I felt such a strong connection to Latin piano classics, to the “Spanish tinge” of Jelly Roll Morton’s haunting tangos, and the fiery Afro-Cuban rhythms, brassy horn figures and call and response vocal patterns of the Salsa genre. In my quest for the answer, I even speculated that there could be a secret Latin connection in the family tree but this simply was not the case. At long last, the light bulb went on! My late mother, a brilliant concert-level pianist, had performed a multitude of the greatest classics in my presence, beginning months before I took my first breath and continuing for years thereafter. The mystery was solved. These impressive works had become a permanent part of me, thanks to my mom’s precious gift. Thank you mom! For better and occasionally for worse, I have spent a richly blessed lifetime promoting our American art form, jazz, in various different ways. I have been fortunate to have played hundreds of professional piano and band gigs, many times with musicians with a much higher level of accomplishment than mine. I am honored to have produced performances by Count Basie, Ray Charles, Dave Brubeck, Chick Corea, Woody Herman, Maynard Ferguson, Poncho Sanchez and countless other household names of jazz. I have sought out and spoken with legendary creators of the art form: Earl Hines, Teddy Wilson, Jay McShann, Basie, Brubeck, Charles, Corea, Horace Silver, Monty Alexander, Kenny Barron, Dizzy Gillespie, McCoy Tyner, Eddie Palmieri and many others. I have met and worked with America’s finest jazz vocalists and instrumentalists too numerous to mention. Along the way, I have produced and taught educational student jazz workshops. The aforementioned life experience and countless hours of constant listening to all styles of music have prepared me to take on this labor of love. A visit to Havana and the Cuban National Jazz Festival in December 2011 was much more than the icing on the cake. It was a life-changing experience. I attended the Cuban National Jazz Festival, hung out with great street musicians and even took a timbale lesson with Amadito Valdés from Buena Vista Social Club. The Havana experience was the inspiration that ignited the fuel that propelled me to take action and compose Latin music. All that having been said, I really love classical, blues, ragtime, stride, swing, classic jazz and virtually all music that is musical and played well.