A kind of carnival of music, happiness, joy and very dancable tunes with host Toni Basanta. www.cubanbridge.wordpress.com

Havana Fairfax Connection 0076

A carnival of music, joy and danceable tunes with host Toni Basanta. www.cubanbridge.wordpress.com Featuring Vermont's Robin Gottfried Band in the LCATV studio.

The opportunity to record our new episode in a Live performance in March 2020 with this caliber of musicians was the fulfillment of a dream since the foundation of our Havana Fairfax Connection TV show @ LCATV in June 2017.
So now I hope you enjoy the spontaneous moments within it.
The selection of Songs by guitarist band leader Robin Gottfried from his 10 self-produced albums under his belt, chosen with care, love and joy; are expressed in every single note. Many thanks and much love to all the present and former members of the Robin Gottfried Band, and also to their families !.
Robin, John and Ian you all have a solid pocket men !
In sum, I highly recommend this wonderful work from Robin Gottfried Band. It's a joyous musical journey and will find its way also into many playlists and rotations, without a doubt. - Toni

Havana Fairfax Connection 0075

Shellhouse: A True Vermont Original Pop Rock Band in the LCATV studio.
Notes from Host Toni Basanta:
Shellhouse became official in 2003, taking the name of a stone in Ferrisburgh, Vermont. The band was started by Bob Teer and Jim Fox, veteran musicians and long time friends, who have been getting together to jam for many years. In 2001, their sessions turned more serious and more regular and they began working on arrangements for some of Bob's original songs.
The vibe was good and the music even better, and the pair fast quickly realized they were creating a special and unique sound.
Soon after they began recording Bob's tunes, as one was completed, Bob had another one ready to go! At first, they played all the instruments themselves, using their multi-talents on electric and acoustic guitars, mandolin, bass and flutes to create their original sound. In time, they added the backgrounds vocals of Andrea Teer, who along with Bob performed for many years as a Folk Duo.
Before long, the Trio had enough songs for an album, and even before the band had officially formed, the first CD titled Boomerang was released to wide local and national critical acclaim.
With the success of Boomerang, and the demand for their sound to jump from the CD to the stage, the Trio decided to expand their reach by adding a bass player and a drummer, and in 2003, Shellhouse was officially created. While the first members of the band was enough to put Shellhouse on the map, it was not to last. Reason why Bob and Jim continued auditioning a host of drummers, some quite good. But it was Bob DeFeo, with his winning personality and professional drumming chops who ultimately fit the Shellhouse profile, and in 2004, he officially joined the band.
Finding the right bassist proved to be an odyssey. They tried out several, played with a few and ultimately lucked out when bassist Marshall Breakstone answered their add. A bassist for a number of popular Burlington bands, they knew instantly that Marshall was a kindred spirit with the experience, the chops and the right style both vocally and on bass, to complete the Shellhouse sound. Shellhouse has had gigs throughout the greater Vermont area playing their original songs and cover tunes by Van Morrison, The Box Tops, Tom Petty, John Hiatt, Bob Dylan, The Band, Eagle Eye Cherry, Warren Zevon, Dire Straits, Bruce Springsteen and more. In January 2012, Shellhouse released their second CD of original music titled Indian Summer.
Shellhouse can be heard on local radio and at Clubs and venues around the greater Burlington area, the Lang Farm Concert Series, at On Tap Bar & Grill and Double E in Essex Junction, Jericho Tavern and Café, Festival on the Green in Middlebury, Harvest Fest at Shelburne farms, and countless others in Richmond and Hinesburg. Shellhouse has a new album A Road Between Two Souls with 13 original songs penned by band leader Bob Teer with his lifetime soulmate and legendary guitarist Jim Fox.
Jim Fox has ties to the 1960s and 1970s Rock lead guitarists, and his nicely playing stimulates Shellhouse's leading voices.Now, Shellhouse has a new drummer, his name is Steve Wanderlich. I found him giving the hour in Dennis Willmott's Left Eye Jump Blues Jams on Saturdays at Red Square in Burlington. Steve is also featured in our Havana Fairfax Connection episode 64 with All That, a band led by pianist Mike Maslack. He came to substitute Shellhouse's longtime drummer and never forgotten Bob DeFeo. Bob is featured in one of our first episodes, #14, with Heartless, a high caliber Vermont Rock Band that plays the music of Heart and Led Zeppelin. Making music is about relating. When a special connection occurs between musicians, that kinship allows the Songs they play together to take on a life of their own, never to be repeated quite the same way again. Hosting Shellhouse was a magical experience for me. I hope you will share in a little bit of this magic when you watch and listen to them once again.
Check them also on their own website: http://www.shellhousemusic.com Their own Record Label name is Dark Before Dawn Essex Junction and Ferrisburg, Vermont. Band leader Bob Teer is also related to some of the Most Prolific Poets in the Green Mountain State http://www.vtpoet.com

Havana Fairfax Connection 0074

A tribute to pianist Emiliano Salvador.
From Host Toni Basanta:
By the time I was 14 years old, EL GESI - the Cuban Institute for Music Making, Arts and Industry Group, had become one of my biggest musical influences. By 16, I owned some of their albums and had listened to most of their live performances at La Cinemateca de Cuba, and other venues.
The pianist on all these albums was Emiliano Salvador, who left this world in 1992, leaving his magic within his writing. Alexis Bosch is among the closer disciples of Emiliano, that I can think of, his playing is unbridled and fiery, not unlike Salvador's own playing. The music of this episode was filmed at the Fine Arts Museum in Havana, Cuba, in 2008 in A Grand Encounter led by Bosch. Twelve years after, EL GESI (Grupo de Experimentación Sonora del ICAIC) received all the honors at the Jazz Plaza International Festival, and I thought it was the best time to bring it to light.
Who is Alexis Bosch ?
Pianist Alexis Bosch is a multi talented wonder, a musician-composer-arranger, steeped in Jazz and its unique and eclectic vocabulary, but whose range of musical touchstones also extend to all the genres of his native Island, plus Rock, Blues, Funk, R & B, Nueva Trova, dancing, Flamenco, Hip-Hop and Children Songs creations. You can hear traces of his extra-jazz instincts in the course of a gig or a solo, in the way he sculps or phrases an improvisation, or in the way he turns the emotive dial from tough to tender.
Like Emiliano, one of his idols, Alexis Bosch studied percussion, and belongs to a Generation of Percussionists who have turned into world-known pianists; Omar Sosa, Javier Masó "Caramelo", Emilio Vega, Miguel Angel de Armas Sr, and Gonzalito Rubalcaba, whose resumes spill over with connections and affiliations. Since 1989, he eventually began to develop the ideas and identity of his band Pasaje Abierto (Open Passage).
Open Passage, on this episode, features longtime collaborators José Ernesto Ermida (electric bass), Emilito del Monte Jr., (percussion), Orlando Sánchez (tenor sax) and Ramsés Rodríguez (drums). As you can all figure out, the subject on this episode is the Cuban piano tradition. It's all about the fluency of music between 10 well-travelled and sympathetic players.
God Bless this Village
A native of the Village of Guanabacoa, Bosch grew up listening to Ernesto Lecuona, Teddy Wilson, Thelonious Monk, Bill Evans, Oscar Peterson, Joe Zawinul, Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, ... plus countless soft-spoken masters, and established himself as a sturdy and forward thinking player on the scene after graduating from the Amadeo Roldán Conservatory of Music in 1985.
Emiliano's Second Quintet: Four sidemen were invited, Robertico García (trumpet and flugel-horn), José Carlos Acosta (tenor sax), Emilito del Monte Sr., (timbales) and Rodolfo Valdés Terry (congas), four remarkable stalwarts who resonated to the treasury of tunes that Emiliano Salvador composed.
The audience at the Fine Arts Museum in Havana, as well as the LCATV viewers, expect dialogue between the players, inventive original material written by Bosch, Salvador and saxophonist José Carlos Acosta, while each player will turn solos into explosive dynamite.
Chinchorrero, Pilón and Aquellas Gaviotas (Those Seagulls), are fiery showcases for what happened in this live show, where the free-ranging of the outgoing vamp enhanced the dignity of the original material. Angélica, Emiliano Salvador's classic relaxed cha cha cha-bossa nova, is reborn here, and dedicated to the composer's daughter, who was at the audience. In short, Alexis Bosch's Open Passage plus Four former members of Emiliano's band, are a Tentet with a mission, to speak the language of Cuban Jazz with honesty and energy.
This millenium marks the 5th decade in which the infectious, carefully crafted music of the Puerto Padre Idol, looms large into the Jazz world's consciousness. Of course, at the heart of it, is Bosch's own generous voice, fulfilling a dream which encompasses a hunger for forward motion and emotions.
Emiliano's tunes, and his piano solos, which have scrawled his funky signature across the Jazz landscape, are responsible for this encounter. Check Alexis Bosch, Robertico García, José Ernesto Ermida and Orlando Sánchez also on episode 44 with another GESI founder, guitarist Pablo Menéndez with his Mezcla Group and the Cuban Jazz All Stars.
We always have a Good Song to end our show, and this time I selected another gem of Emiliano's crop; En Una Volanta Actual - a Cuban jazz country-dance, arranged by reedman Juan Manuel Ceruto with La Puerto Padre Big Band and Strings.
This sterling composition serves as a background to present a whole bunch of his followers. Please have mercy and dig them all!
Peace Is All We Need

Havana Fairfax Connection 0072

A carnival of music, joy and danceable tunes with host Toni Basanta. www.cubanbridge.wordpress.com
Jazz and Rumba with Kono in Havana - Haruhiko Kono was born in Tokyo, Japan in 1958.
He began studying Cuban percussion at age 21 with the late Yoshinori Nomi, who at that time was a member of The Tokyo Cuban Boys, a big band founded in 1949, and is still the most representative institution of Latin Rhythms, absorbing the tradition and introducing the Mambo and all the Cuban genres in Japan.
In 1984, Kono traveled to CUBA to take part in the Varadero Beach Music Festival, where he first got in touch with his mentor Oscar Valdés, former lead singer and percussionist of Irakere. Three years later, the bug bit him so hard in his island, that he decided to settle down in Havana and continue playing his percussion set.
In those days, Haruhiko Kono could barely speak Spanish, and his mentor did not speak Japanese, but the language of the Drums. In 1995, Kono became a charter member of his mentor's band, Diákara Ten years after, he produced his first album as a leader Thanks Cuba !. Kono's interest in Cuban percussion led him to become a student at the Fine Arts Institute (better known as El ISA) in Havana.
In this new episode, the band siding Kono's Happy Anniversary, stands out in my mind as magical !
About Kono his mentor Oscar Valdés II stated : "I consider him a scholar, a scientist of Cuban percussion, Kono has visited all the provinces, investigating all aspects of drumming, and now he has the largest catalog of our folkloric music. He began very important works, for his dissertation at El ISA which led him to a deeper analysis and study of all our Afro-Cuban percussion roots".
Since 1984, Haruhiko Kono has augmented the wires that join two cultures, apparently so distant and so different, but with ancestral love in common for arts.
Retro Mission
Historically, jazz has turned to the popular music of the day for its repertoire, but here you will have the opportunity to discover young composer and trumpet player Alejandro Delgado contributing one of his compositions Crazy Men in a fiery dialogue with Julio Rigal. But the core of the Live Show embraces the fire, erudition and activism of Diákara's well-seasoned Group sound honed over 20 more years, with the longest running weekly jazz gigs at La Zorra y El Cuervo and El Jazz Café in Havana.
This episode celebrating Kono's Anniversary, covers new territory musically and sonically, pushing the boundaries of Afro-Cuban Jazz with classics of Luciano "Chano" Pozo, Dizzy Gillespie, Walter "Gil" Fuller, John Coltrane, and Yemayá, a traditional song from Nigeria, arranged by reedman Liván Morejón.
The band is completed with pianist Eslys Edrey González, drummer Vicente Homero García, percussionist Mary Paz, another alumni of Oscar Valdés II, singers Haila Mompié and Tania Pantoja, and bassist Mayelín Velázquez. The soloists express their individualism without sounding fettered or compromised, making the tunes their own. Yet, none of these tunes let you forget for a moment who owned them first.
Peace is all we need

Havana Fairfax Connection 0071

A carnival of music, joy and danceable tunes with host Toni Basanta. www.cubanbridge.wordpress.com Featuring Vermont bluegrass Band Beg Steal or Borrow in the LCATV studio.
Havana Fairfax Connection presents: Bluegrass Band Beg Steal or Borrow: Episode 71.
One of the pleasures of hosting music program is the ability to meet the players with whom one feels a musical connection. Beg Steal or Borrow is the best example, and they brought me deep into their songs.
I have not changed my love of jazz, but just took the opportunity to bring my TV show into a new direction: Bluegrass Sounds in America !
For me, hosting a radio and a TV show in Vermont, has been an endless journey, and every once in a while, it's good to take a side detour, as you never know where it might lead you.
The concept of Blue Grass, as a process, means a collective creation rather than a set of specific rhythms or riffs from the soloists. It is a genre of American roots music that developed in the 1940s in the Appalachian region. The genre derives its name from the band Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys, and it was further developed by musicians who played with Monroe.
This encounter with Beg Steal or Borrow will keep viewers, music programmers and impresarios, alert, as Blue Grass keeps gaining track in the 21st century.
Musicians like Fran Forim (bass), Geoff Goodhue (mandolin), Jeremy Sicely (guitar), Luke Auriemmo (banjo), and Roland Clark (fiddle and violin) are a major reason why.
Their journey began 7 years ago, and their main goal was resurrecting the music of Old & in The Way, a band that included Grateful Dead front man Jerry Garcia on banjo and vocals, Peter Rowan on lead vocals, Vassar Clements (fiddle), John Kahn (bass) and David Grissman (mandolin and vocals).
Beg Steal or Borrow are grateful for the places their mission has taken them, and to the people they have met along the way. Inspired by their travels and time together, they began to broaden their own musical branch, borrowing from the Roots, and by stealing a few licks, that finally came to populate their debut album "Old Mountain Time" with 10 compositions of its own members.

How I found Beg Steal or Borrow ?
It was in the Artists' Mediums Art Shop in Cambridge, Vermont, talking to owner and curator Chelsea, a very nice lady, with whom I had exchanged some Havana Fairfax Connection episodes to be promoted with her customers. artshopAM.com
Some of her customers and artists were delighted when they watched Ruy Lopez-Nussa y La Academia on Chelsea's computer, and that was the path for the beginning of this new episode.
Old Mountain Time was on a shelf "For Sale", and Chelsea, inspired by the episodes she saw, gifted it to me, so I could connect with their bandleader, and so I did.
My first real experiences with Blue Grass sounds began at WRUV 90.1 FM Burlington, the University of Vermont Campus Radio, in 2007, and also in some Concerts for students with bands coming from Massachusetts and Canada, especially singer and songwriter Gordon Lightfoot, whose show I attended at the Flynn Theater.
Later on, in the Valley Stage Festivals, hosted by musician and impresario Don Sheldon in the backyard of his home in Huntington, Vt. I discovered Collin McCaffrey with his impressive voice, leading his Cold Stone Roosters.
Coming from Milton and Starksboro, banjoist Rick Ceballos and multi-instrumentalist Lausanne Allen, graciously came to my radio show The Cuban Bridge at St. Michael's College and then to my former show on TV in Richmond's MMCTV.
I had met Rick Ceballos at VCAM, responding to an invitation of media personality and musician Rik Palieri. At the Vermont International Festival, I discovered Rowan.
Always curious about the Sounds of Music, I once discovered Bluegrass Underground on PBS, a program taped deep within the subterranean amphitheater of The Caverns in Tennessee's majestic Cumberland Mountains, 333 feet below, South of Nashville, TN.
This "musical adventure" series featured both long-established and emerging artists within a broad spectrum of genres to include roots-rock, jamband, r&b, soul, folk and Americana.
After this new episode with Beg Steal or Borrow, I have discovered a lot more about each one of their members. For instance, fiddler and violinist Roland Clark has played Duets with jazz guitar master and composer, Bill FriselI, but that will be a new story for a next meeting.
I hope the crowds go wild and fall in love with this new episode @ LCATV, it can help bring Bluegrass' spirit to life even more, especially for those who would have found it unreachable before.
Peace is all we need
-Toni

Havana Fairfax Connection 0070

A carnival of music, joy and danceable tunes with host Toni Basanta. www.cubanbridge.wordpress.com Featuring Yumiri and his brothers.
MOISES VALLE "YUMURI" 36 YEARS SINGING TO THE WORLD
Yumurí y sus Hermanos is a Cuban band led by singer and songwriter Moisés Valle better known as Yumiri since September 1992. It has become a chart topping sensation, mixing son montuno, salsa, cha cha cha, mambo, danzon, merengue, and conga de comparsa.
The band consists of Moisés, his brothers and in recent years, his sons. In 1993, they won prizes for the best new band of the year on the Cuban TV show Mi Salsa. The arrangements are mainly done by his brother-flutist Orlando "Maraca" Valle, former member of showman Bobby Carcassés and AfroJazz, Emiliano Salvador, Chucho Valdés and Irakere, and Cubanismo.
In 1994, the band toured Japan. Then in 1997, Yumurí played in the show Cuba Tropical, again in Japan, and onto Venezuela, Panama, the US, Mexico, Switzerland and France. In the New Millenium, new tours and recordings, helping to shape the sound of dancing music.
Discography
More than 16 albums as a leader, and top shelf collaborations with his brothers, Orquesta de la Luz from Japan, with rapper Papo Records, Salsa Idol Andy Montañez, Merengue Poet Juan Luis Guerra, Compay Segundo, Country Music sensation Beby Verdecia, Gitanos, Aragón Orchestra, Alexander Abreu, Lázaro El Fino, El Guajiro Pompa, and pianist-producer Isidro Infante. Cocodrilo de Agua Salá Magic Music, Spain 1993. Provocación Victor Entertainment Japan, 1996. Olvídame si puedes Bis Music Cuba, 1999. Sonando with his brother Orlando Valle "Maraca" Ahi Na'Ma, USA, 1999, Agárrate with his brother Luis Valle Sabroso Records / Ahora Corporation, Japan, 2005, Bilongo Bis Music, 2002. Salsa y Candela Bis Music, 2004; Live at La Casa de la Musica Bis Music CD/DVD 2005; Greatest Hits 2006; Cubano Cubano 2007 ; My Mountain with singer Beby Verdecia, Colibri 2006; Gitanos Band feat. Yumuri Bis Music, 2019; Changanero Bis Music, 2019; Isidro Infante Presents Cuba y Puerto Rico; Un Abrazo Musical Salsero; Latin Grammy Nominee 2017 - Winner of Cuba Disco Honor Award, 2019.
Yumurí was born on 29 July, 1964. Studied at the University of Havana. He has sung with Imagen Latina, La Orquesta Revé and others, before becoming a world favorite. If you see him in 2021, two of his sons are now part of The Family Band !
Peace is All We Need

Havana Fairfax Connection 0068

A carnival of music, joy and danceable tunes with host Toni Basanta. www.cubanbridge.wordpress.com Featuring Vermont's Eric Hoh Trio at the Burlington Discover Jazz Festival 2019.
From Toni:
Bassist Eric Hoh Trio is composed of three musicians from diverse backgrounds, and everyone of them plays with intense passion and pleasure together.
Eric is always seeking new textures, new forms, new compositions, and new ways to present his signature sound. The music is diverse in a characteristically Vermont way. Their performance at the Vermont Pub & Brewery during the Burlington Discover Jazz Fest 2019, burned and boogied, lilted quietly and unfolded unexpectedly, in this prominent venue.
Keyboardist Andrew Hildebrandt resonated with passion and sensitivity. Check his Piano Tumbao on Dizzy Gillespie's Groovin' High, which really surprised me and couldn't hide my emotion. We discovered Andrew while hosting our Episode # 27 with guitarist Marc Steffenhagen, as they are longtime friends and began a band early in their lives.
Even though, the Eric Hoh Trio has been featured with various drummers, the result of this performance was dazzling and accomplished.
Drummer Gabe Jarrett served as an extraordinary partner. A life long musician, Gabe began playing at age 5 and was performing by 12. Born and raised in New York and New Jersey, he studied drums and composition at the New School Jazz program in The Big Apple (NYC), before relocating to New England.
As studies with Charlie Persip and Bob Gulotti honed his technique, demand for Gabe as a musical and creative sideman grew. When at home in Richmond, Vermont, Gabe teaches music and percussion at SUNY Plattsburgh, Johnson State and Saint Michael's College. Gabe is featured in another of our Havana Fairfax Connection episodes, # 66 with guitarist Paul Asbell Quartet, also at the Vermont Pub and Brewery during the 2019 Fest.
I'd also love to add a few lines about Gabe Jarrett. His performances at the drum kit are fundamental and archetypal, and that he is the son of pianist extraordinaire Keith Jarrett, the man who changed the face of Jazz, after his resounding Piano Solo Concerto in Colonia, Germany on January 24, 1975.
Our final liner notes for this episode, end up with a Tribute to Herbie Hancock's and Keith Jarrett's Music over the tapestry of NYC based saxophonist Russ Nolan and his Quartet.
There's a lot more to say about these World Treasures, by now, this is just a call of duty.
Peace Is All We Need.

Havana Fairfax Connection 0064

Today, we are going to fly back in our time machine, and give life to the first Jazz DVD released in Cuba, and featuring three of the most popular band leaders at the time : trumpeter Alexander Brown, pianist Roberto Carcassés, and guitarist Elmer Ferrer. This is a unique and powerful collaboration filmed Live at Abdala Studios in Havana in 2004. Three sets of new material that ranges from guajiras, cha cha cha, fiery tumbaos, to moody ballads, funk, rock and blues. Have you ever been touched by sound? Now you will, and then you will begin to connect the dots with Modern Cuban Jazz.

Havana Fairfax Connection 0063

It might surprise Feliciano Arango's many fans, that "Bass on Cuban Timba", released in 2014, is his first DVD as a leader. The first time, that I saw him playing, was at Jazz Plaza Festival in Havana in 1980, in a Quartet led by guitarist René Luís Toledo, then I have followed him for always. Born in the Village of Guanabacoa, the bassist now 60, boasts a vast and distinguished discography that includes more than 100 albums with the groundbreaking Super Group NG La Banda in 1989, others with flutist Orlando Valle "Maraca", pianist Roberto Carcassés, singers and songwriters Yusa and Silvio Rodríguez, drummer Oliver Valdés (CD / DVD Drums La Habana), Mexican guitarists Rodrigo y Gabriela, and his family band Los Hermanos Arango (Arango Brothers). On April 4, 1989, a new band came on board, it was NG La Banda, led by flutist José Luís Cortés. Among the founders was bassist Feliciano Arango. They played all over Europe, in the biggest Jazz Festivals and dancing venues. In this new HFFC episode, we want to celebrate The Modern Timba influence in the 7 continents, either dancing or jazz, and also share with you, how Modern Cuban Beats are shaped without forgetting the roots. Now is your time to enjoy, an Approach to Cuban Dancing Music in the 1990s, a Master Class, and a Jam Session.

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