• Submitted by: admin
• Arts and Culture
• Matanzas
• Music
• 05 / 21 / 2007

The "Varadero Jazz Session", an event summoned by the Cuban Ministries of Culture and Tourism, will be taking place the coming September. This festival, presided over by the Cuban virtuoso, Chucho Valdes, will gather a big group of outstanding jazz musicians from Cuba and abroad.

"Varadero Jazz Session" will have a yearly edition, taking as venue this beautiful area located in the Central Cuban province of Matanzas, so famous by its natural splendor, its warm and transparent beaches, and the spiritual nature of its inhabitants.

The main purpose of this event consists in promoting a cultural tourism in this Central region, and accentuating the existing one that was always opened to music, classic dance and other art expressions. According to what Chucho Valdes explained to Prensa Latina News Agency, the "Varadero Jazz Session" aims at enriching the dialogue and a mutual interaction among the jazz musicians, through that freedom that characterizes these sessions where each musician seems to play for himself.

The arrangements for the Festival has already started at the jazz center. Valdés, winner of five "Grammys", will also be President of Honor of another tradicional event, the "Jojazz", that will take place from the last week of November and the first days of December of this year, with venue in Havana, the Cuban capital. Besides, in February, 2008, he will preside over the International Festival "Jazz Plaza 2008", having as venue the Havanas Cultural Center located in Plaza de la Revolucion, where he was born in 1979.

Since then this Center has welcomed outstanding personalities of this musical genre, as the North American Dizzie Gillespie, the British Pete King and Ronnie Scott, the Brazilian Ivan Lins, and the Canadian Hugh Fraser. From now on, this festival will be celebrated in the month of February, as before, instead of December. This new edition of "Varadero Jazz Session" will be a singular experience for foreigners and Cubans, followers of this kind of music.

The first one took place in 2003, at Matanzas Square, on the occasion of celebrating the 30th anniversary of "Irakere" -a Cuban group directed by Chucho Valdés-. Among the inviters to this event were the Argentinean guitarist, Luis Salinas, and the North American trombonist, of Mexican origin, Steve Turre. On that occasion the jazz session was able to gather between 20 to 25 thousand people. The legend that described it as a musical gender for beginners minorities was broken into pieces.

Source: Cubarte