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Supported by our soundscape designers Bang & Olufsen.
1st House: Doors open 6:00pm, performance begins 7:00pm
2nd House: Doors open 8:45pm, performance begins 9:15pm
£45 Table Seating | £25 Standing
Gonzalo Rubalcaba (piano), Matt Brewer (bass), Ernesto Simpson (drums)
We are thrilled to announce the concert of GRAMMY-Award winning pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba and his latest release Turning Point. Turning Point introduces a new trio, Trio D’été, which features stalwart bassist Matt Brewer and star drummer Eric Harland. The second in a planned trilogy of trio recordings, this new release follows in the footsteps of Rubalcaba’s Skyline, which won the GRAMMY award in 2022 for Best Jazz Instrumental Album. Each performance will last around 75 minutes.
Bio
The multi-Grammy© winner, pianist and composer Gonzalo Rubalcaba was already a young phenom with a budding career in his native Cuba when he was discovered by Dizzy Gillespie in 1985. Since, Piano & Keyboard Magazine selected him in 1999 as one of the great pianists of the 20th century, alongside figures such as Glenn Gould, Martha Argerich and Bill Evans; won two Grammys and two Latin Grammys, and established himself as a creative force in the jazz world.
He was born on May 27, 1963 in a musical family in Havana. His father, pianist, composer and bandleader Guillermo Rubalcaba, had also played in the orchestra of Enrique Jorrín, the creator of cha-cha-cha; his grandfather Jacobo Rubalcaba, was the composer of classic danzones, and his two brothers are also musicians. Gonzalo, a child prodigy who by the age of 6 was playing drums in his father’s orchestra, started his formal training two years later, with piano as his main instrument.
The encounters with Gillespie and, in 1986, with Charlie Haden and then Blue Note Records president, Bruce Lundvall, set the stage to finally showcase Rubalcaba ́s talent before jazz audiences in the United States. These years are documented in a series of recordings in Havana and Frankfurt, Germany, including three superb recordings with his Cuban Quartet on the German label Messidor : Mi Gran Pasión (1987), Live in Havana (1989) and Giraldilla (1990). Rubalcaba moved to the Dominican Republic in 1991 and settled in Miami in 1996.
Conservatory-trained, he has performed Bartók with symphony orchestras and recently has been composing his own piano concerto. He has recorded dozens of albums as a leader and is comfortable playing in a variety of styles: straight-ahead jazz, fusion, folkloric Cuban. He speaks of the “essence of Cuban music — the Black factor, the African roots. In Cuba we found a way to explore and develop all those roots together with the European classical music, and together with the music of other countries, like Mexico, and with America’s jazz culture.”
In April 2022, Rubalcaba’s Skyline — a trio session featuring bassist Ron Carter and drummer Jack DeJohnette — won the GRAMMY award for best jazz instrumental album. Last year, his Viento y Tiempo: Live at the Blue Note Tokyo — co-led by Cuban singer Aymee Nuviola, a lifelong friend — received a GRAMMY nomination for Best Latin Jazz Album.
Discover Gonzalo Rubalcaba: Website | YouTube | Instagram