Chucho Valdés with the Afro-Cuban Messengers January 31, 2012

Adult $47 | University Park Student $20 | 18 and Younger $40



Cuban pianist Chucho Valdés, the dean of Latin jazz, has recorded more than eighty albums and performed with a plethora of elite jazz makers. “Whether Chucho Valdés is performing a gentle ballad or a rousing foot-stomper, his joy in playing and his love of the music always shines through,” writes an All About Jazz critic. In 2009 he formed his newest band. “Valdés hasn’t called his band the Afro-Cuban Messengers for nothing: it joins much of the hard-boppish crispness and percussive punch of Art Blakey’s legendary Jazz Messengers to the traditional rhythms and drum textures of Cuban dance music,” writes a reviewer for Britain’s The Guardian. “The leader’s own playing is titanic, from his stirring chordwork behind his already inflamed soloists to his improvisations of blazing trills and cascading runs.”

Official Website: http://www.cpa.psu.edu/events/valdes.html