photo by courtesy of Concord Records
"Ninety Miles" CD cover
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Concord Picante’s summer offering “Ninety Miles” is the 2010 recording of the culmination of years of effort.  Grammy winner David Sanchez on saxophone and Grammy nominees Stefon Harris, vibraphone, and Christian Scott on trumpet, combine their talents with native born Cuban pianists Rember Duharte and Harold Lopez-Nussa in this recording from Havana.  Yes, Havana—ringing with Afro-Cuban rhythms—and this music travels with you.  The melodies are cool and hot at the same time, just what you want in vibrating that inner ear in the fetid subway and the melting hot Dali-esque sidewalk and on overheated highways.  This is jazz that puts you on vacation as you’re heading to work–and somehow that heat doesn’t feel quite so hot when you are listening to another world. The title refers to the fact that from the southernmost point of the continental United States, Key West, Cuba is only 90 miles away, but worlds away in music.
The language of jazz is common to these players who have extraordinary careers on their own.  Duharte and Lopez-Nussa each have their own quartets.  Painted on a larger canvas, this collection of nine songs comprises a set that has so many different things to say.  It took about a year to get the necessary paperwork granted between the United States and Cuba.  May 2010 was when the long anticipated performance took place and this album is the studio recording made immediately prior to the live concert.
Harris contributed three of the nine tracks on the CD, including the haunting percussion driven “Black Action Figure”, the contemplative, almost confessional “This Too Shall Pass” and the playful “Brown Belle Blues,” written specifically for this concert.  Hailing from Puerto Rico, Sanchez is tapped in deep into the Afro-Cuban sound and “City Sunrise” is a particularly colorful and evocative piece, textured with traditional African percussion instruments layering and swirling in and around the punctuating brass.  “The Forgotten Ones” was written for the New Orleans residents who survived Hurricane Katrina and are still struggling to get their lives back.  Sanchez’ saxophone is philosophical and evocative, posing questions in Socratic style for which many have no answer.  Scott was born and raised in this birthplace of jazz and NOLA itself is a masala of spicy Cuban, Dominican and Haitian images going back to well before the United States was the United States.  His great-grandmother sang Cuban songs to him through his boyhood so, while he doesn’t consider himself Cuban per se, he’s channeled that into his trumpet illuminating New Orleans styles with a bit more Caribbean flair.
Ultimately, it’s clear that while music is a common language, what each musician brings to the work makes the collaboration much greater than the sum of its parts.  If you’re looking for something really different, evocative of heat and all the best aspects of summer, “Ninety Miles,” now a CD and DVD set, is it.  Mix a Cuba Libre and enjoy.
For more information on where to get your copy of “Ninety Miles,” visit www.concordmusicgroup.com