Event Information

For almost 60 years, Chucho Valdés and Paquito DRivera have been widely recognized as distinguished players and composers in the world of Afro-Cuban music, Jazz, Classical, and the most diverse musical styles. From their youth, Chucho and Paquito cultivated a solid friendship inherited from their fathers Bebo and Tito, prominent musicians in the dynamic artistic life of the dazzling Havana of the 1940s and 1950s. Both trained in the academic Classical music tradition, very soon they were also attracted to great improvisers such as Oscar Peterson, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and other jazz stars. Together they developed most of their activities in the Musical Theater of Havana and in the Orquesta Cubana de Música Moderna, which DRivera conducted for 2 years, until 1973 when Chucho invited his inseparable friend to participate in the founding of Irakere, one of the most transcendental groups of the whole musical history of Cuba.