IMN : Updates for Pedrito Martinez

Cuba, and then some: Pedrito Martinez Group

IMN

March 29th, 2013

from AspenTimes.com

Cuba, and then some: Pedrito Martinez Group at Aspen’s JAS Cafe
By Stewart Oksenhorn

ASPEN — One way of looking at it is that Pedrito Martinez had everything he needed, musically, sitting right outside his front door.

In the Havana neighborhood where Martinez grew up, directly across the street from his house was a theater that specialized in traditional Cuban music. “It was very easy, very natural, to find people to teach me,” said Martinez, who began playing music at the age of 11. “They let you watch the rehearsals.”

On his new album, “Rumba de la Isla,” released last week, Martinez mixes the old-school sounds of Afro-Cuban music with Spanish flamenco. The album is a tribute to the prominent flamenco singer Camarón de la Isla. But while taking on songs associated with Camarón, Martinez keeps the music firmly rooted in what he heard from across the way when he was a kid. Martinez doesn’t reveal much need to stray outside those deep, lively Cuban rhythms.

To read the full article click here

Congo Square rhythms fest kicks off March 23

IMN

March 17th, 2013

from The Associated Press

Congo Square rhythms fest kicks off March 23
by Stacey Plaisance

NEW ORLEANS – By New Orleans standards, the Congo Square New World Rhythms Festival is relatively young, reaching its sixth year this month. But the music and culture that the two-day event celebrates made their way to the Gulf South region centuries ago.

Beginning in the 1700s, slaves and free people of colour gathered in Congo Square on Sundays to trade goods and play music. It’s where much of the city’s early jazz, blues and gospel music was born, and the square will serve as the centerpiece of the free festival, to be held March 23-24 in Armstrong Park.

“The music that was conceived in Congo Square gave birth to jazz, to our second-line tradition, and the call and response that we still incorporate in our music today,” said Luther Gray, a New Orleans drummer who will perform with the group Bamboula 2000 for the festival. Gray also is a member of the Congo Square Preservation Society, the group established in the late 1980s to help protect Congo Square from urban development.

“This festival is important because it celebrates the roots and soul of New Orleans culture, the spirit that comes out of Congo Square and the dances that were done there,” Gray said.

The Congo Square event is one of four two-day music festivals launched by the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 to give more employment opportunities to the city’s musicians. It also was designed to celebrate the city’s musical history and help stimulate the cultural economy, said Scott Aiges, spokesman for the foundation.

To read the full article click here

Pedrito Martinez: Force of Nature

IMN

March 13th, 2013

from BLOUIN ARTINFO

Pedrito Martinez: Force of Nature
By Larry Blumenfeld

Those who attend Afro-Cuban ceremonies in Brooklyn and the Bronx, or in Union City, New Jersey, experience the power and talent of Pedrito Martinez in a religious setting—“hands like thunder, and a voice like lightning,” as saxophonist Jane Bunnett described it for a Wall Street Journal piece on Martinez that I wrote last year. (She met him at such a ceremony in his native Cuba, before he left to join her in Canada; by 2000, he had won the Thelonious Monk jazz competition and moved to Union City.)

As a percussionist and a singer (as a rumbero) Martinez does seem a force of nature, so powerful is his effect to transform places and moments. Many have been moved by Martinez on midweek nights, when his quartet is in residency at the Midtown Manhattan restaurant Guantanamera. Between the narrow restaurant’s few dozen tables, waiters often compete with diners moved to dance. “At first, we played traditional Cuban songs there,” Martinez told me for a much longer feature in Jazziz magazine. “But then we decided to just play what we love and let people get used to it.” They have. Among the consistent crowd at Guantanamera has been a steady stream of admiring musicians, including Wynton Marsalis, Eric Clapton and Roger Waters.

Martinez’s talent has oozed out on stages and recordings in many contexts. His batá drumming was the first sound heard on pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba’s latest recording, “XXI Century.” His chanting opened the recent “Today’s Opinion,” from saxophonist Yosvany Terry. A year ago, Martinez transformed Robert Johnson’s “Traveling Riverside Blues” into something distinctly Afro-Cuban during a star-studded Rhythm & Blues Foundation benefit at Harlem’s Apollo Theater. In May, he popped up as both headliner and scene-stealing guest on four different stages at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. In June at Lincoln Center, he helped Paul Simon memorably rework hits like “Late in the Evening” in collaboration with Wynton Marsalis. In July at London’s Barbican Theater, he joined Marsalis’ orchestra for a program that included his own compositions. In August, his quartet kept a crowd at the Montreux Jazz Festival enthralled well past midnight. (That festival’s producer, Claude Nobs, fell in love with the band after stopping into Guantanamera.) When pianist Michele Rosewoman reunites her great New Yor-Uba band in New York next month, Martinez assumes the key spot formerly held by a legendary Cuban musician, Orlando “Puntilla’ Ríos.

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Rumba de la Isla

IMN

March 12th, 2013

Release Date: March 12, 2013

Pedrito Martínez’s Rumba de la Isla is an album of songs once interpreted by Camarón de la Isla, the legendary Flamenco icon. Martínez puts his own personal take on classic songs by Camarón in this unique tribute to the greatest Flamenco artist of all time. Produced by Fernando Trueba and Nat Chediak, Rumba de la Isla celebrates the convergence of Cuban and Flamenco rumbas. From the percussive and daring first track, “Que a mí me vió de nacer” to the last track, “Homenaje a Camarón,” written by Martínez, the album boasts originality as it moves away from well-trodden paths and provides the most creative merge of Cuban and Flamenco music.

Born in Havana, Cuba, Martínez began his musical career at the age of eleven, performing as a vocalist and percussionist with such Cuban legends as Tata Guines and Munequitos de Matanzas. Two years after moving to North America in 1998, Martínez won first prize in the Thelonious Monk Institute Competition in the Afro-Latin Hand Drumming category. Martínez has recorded with many well-known artists including Sting, Cassandra Wilson, Eddie Palmieri, Meshell Ndegeocello, Eliane Elias and Edie Brickell, to name a few, and was featured in the film Calle 54 directed by Fernando Trueba. As a member of the band Yerba Buena, he toured the world with Dave Matthews Band, Willie Nelson and Ray Charles. Martínez has been nominated for six Grammys®, and won one for his participation on the Eddie Palmieri & Brian Lynch album Simpático.

Now based in NYC, Pedrito and his band regularly perform at Guantanamera in Manhattan and the group has built a fan base that includes Steve Gadd, Ravi Coltrane, Taj Mahal, Eric Clapton, John Scofield, Roger Waters, Derek Trucks, Herlin
Riley and Will Lee.

Track Listing:
1. Que a mí me vió de nacer
2. Yo vivo enamorao
3. Dos estrellas relucientes
4. Sólo vivo pa’ quererte
5. Volando voy
6. Quiero quitarme esta pena
7. No naqueres na’ de mí
8. Gitana te quiero
9. Homenaje a Camarón

Pedrito Martinez: "Rumba de la Isla"

IMN

March 10th, 2013

from The New York Times

Albums by Bon Jovi, Pedrito Martínez and Jaleel Shaw
By: Ben Ratliff

There’s rumba in Afro-Cuban music, and there’s rumba in Andalusian flamenco. They’re not the same thing; they don’t denote the same rhythms. But the word indicates a connection between two musical cultures, and that may be enough for “Rumba de la Isla,” an album of songs associated with the great Spanish cantaor Camarón de la Isla, who died in 1992, and reworked by Pedrito Martínez, a 39-year-old Cuban-born, New York-based percussionist, singer and progressive rumbero.

What’s fine on paper turns out to be profound in the ear. Mr. Martínez doesn’t try to incorporate the rough tremors or hard semaphore shouting of the flamenco cante jondo style into his singing; he’s a Cuban rumba singer, floating unbroken, fluid melodic lines over busy polyrhythms. As he and his bandmates find a consensual rhythmic center, Camarón’s songs become deeply reworked, rhythmically and harmonically, with improvisations trickling from the tangle.

The band on “Rumba de la Isla,” recorded in a New York studio a few years ago, weighs more toward New World than Old: besides Mr. Martínez, it includes the percussionist-singer Román Díaz and the violinist Alfredo de la Fé, both Cubans, as well as the Puerto Rican electric bassist John Benítez. They’re set up alongside two Spanish virtuosos, the percussionist Piraña (playing the cajón, the box-shaped wooden instrument used in a lot of modern flamenco) and the guitarist Niño Josele, whose sudden alert shifts and filigreed picking are sometimes eclipsed by the sheer volume of other fascinating things happening at the same time, at different rhythms, coming from different languages and imperatives.

To read the full review click here

Chico & Rita nominated for two NAACP Image Awards

IMN

December 12th, 2012

Chico & Rita nominated for two NAACP Image Awards

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which honors diversity in the arts, announced their nominations for the 44th annual NAACP Image Awards, scheduled to air February 1, 2013 on NBC. Congratulations to Chico & Rita, an animated film that features Pedrito Martinez on vocals and percussion, for being nominated for both the Independent Motion Picture Award and the International Motion Picture Award.

For the full list of nominees click here

Pedrito Martinez Quartet at A Place For Jazz

IMN

December 10th, 2012

From Metroland

Pedrito Martinez Quartet
By: Jeff Nania

Pedrito Martinez is no stranger to the Capital Region. He brought his group with pianist Ariacne Trujillo, Percussionist Jhair Sala, and bassist Alvaro Benevides to Mountain Jam, SPAC Jazz Fest, and Albany Riverfront Jazz Fest all within the past year. Each performance was spectacular, but the performance at A Place For Jazz on Friday was a surprising treat. Trujillo complemented Martinez again on this date and John Benitez played electric and upright basses. Rather than a second percussionist, Martinez opted instead for a trumpeter, Mike Rodriguez.

This necessarily gave Martinez more responsibility for the use of percussive space, and he filled it with charm. He played two congas—a segundo, and a tumbador—and also sat on a cajon, played a snare drum with bare hands and had a bell that he played with a foot pedal. This setup is just another way that Martinez eliminates cultural boundaries, moving in and out of traditional grooves and timbres. Martinez and Trujillo’s playing is always mutually inspiring, and reaches incredible heights, but the addition of Benitez to the rhythm section created a powerful, positive force. Benitez could astound the crowd with his solo chops as he spun out endless ideas while maintaining a cool bounce. He could also hang back harder than anyone and sync in with Martinez’s congas, slamming the butt of his hand into the lowest bass string and dragging it down the fretboard.

To read the full review, click here.

Quick Hands, a Voice Like Lightning

IMN

July 31st, 2012

From The Wall Street Journal

Quick Hands, a Voice Like Lightning
Versatile Pedrito Martinez Sets Shows

By Larry Blumenfeld

As a boy in the Cayo Hueso neighborhood of Havana, Pedrito Martinez didn’t focus much on school. He often ditched classes for religious ceremonies, studying instead the drumming and singing central to Cuba’s African-derived rituals and folkloric music. “I felt like I had entered a paradise I could not have imagined,” he said at his apartment in Union City, N.J. “The energy just pulled me in. I told myself, ‘This is what I want to do. This is what I want my life to be.’”

And so it is. Most weekends, Mr. Martinez spends hours singing and playing two-headed batá drums at homes in Brooklyn and the Bronx, following traditions brought to Cuba by enslaved Africans in the 18th and 19th centuries. The spiritual uplift that first inspired him, and those same rhythms, also animate the decidedly modern music that has placed Mr. Martinez in more popular venues.

In March, he transformed Robert Johnson’s “Traveling Riverside Blues” into something distinctly Cuban during a star-studded Rhythm & Blues Foundation benefit at the Apollo Theater. In May, he popped up as both headliner and scene-stealing guest at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. In June, he helped Paul Simon memorably extend the song “Late in the Evening” in collaboration with Wynton Marsalis. At London’s Barbican Theater earlier this month, he joined Mr. Marsalis’s orchestra for a program that included his own compositions.

With his dazzling smile and boxer’s build (he trained as one in Cuba), Mr. Martinez looks younger than his 39 years. He is a stirring presence in any setting, but his abilities come across best through his quartet. The group will perform in a Summerstage concert at Marcus Garvey Park on Aug. 6 and at the Highline Ballroom on Aug. 29, opening for trumpeter and conga player Jerry Gonzalez. Yet the truest context is the group’s residency, Tuesdays through Thursdays at the Midtown Manhattan restaurant Guantanamera. Between the narrow restaurant’s few dozen tables, waiters often compete with diners moved to dance.

To read the full article click here

Confirmed Tourdates As Of

IMN

June 15th, 2013: Hollywood Bowl Los Angeles, CA USA [The Pedrito Martinez Group featuring Ariacne Trujillo]
June 16th, 2013: SFJAZZ Center San Francisco, CA USA [The Pedrito Martinez Group featuring Ariacne Trujillo]
June 17th, 2013: Kuumbwa Jazz Center Santa Cruz, CA USA [The Pedrito Martinez Group featuring Trujillo]
June 22nd, 2013: Clifford Brown Jazz Festival Wilmington, DE USA [The Pedrito Martinez Group]
June 30th, 2013: Scene/Stage Rio Tinto Alcan, Montreal Jazz Festiva Montreal, CANADA [The Pedrito Martinez Group featuring Ariacne Trujillo ]
July 1st, 2013: Scene/Stage Rio Tinto Alcan, Montreal Jazz Festiva Montreal, CANADA [The Pedrito Martinez Group featuring Ariacne Trujillo ]
July 2nd, 2013: Rockefeller Park New York, NY USA [The Pedrito Martinez group featuring Ariacne Trujillo]
July 11th, 2013: Jazzopen Stuttgart Stuttgart, Germany [The Pedrito Martinez Group featuring Ariacne Trujillo]
July 12th, 2013: Place Massena, Nice Jazz Festival Nice, France [The Pedrito Martinez Group featuring Ariacne Trujillo]
July 13th, 2013: Kulturhuset Islands Brygge Copenhagen, Denmark [The Pedrito Martinez Group featuring Ariacne Trujillo]
July 26th, 2013: Mendocino Music Festival Performance Tent, Mendoci Mendocino, CA USA [The Pedrito Martinez Group featuring Ariacne Trujillo]
August 2nd, 2013: Belleayre Jazz Club Highmount, NY USA [The Pedrito Martinez Group featuring Ariacne Trujillo]
September 7th, 2013: Moab Music Festival Moab, UT USA [The Pedrito Martinez group featuring Ariacne Trujillo]
October 10th, 2013: Weinberg Center Frederick, MD USA [The Pedrito Martinez Group]
October 12th, 2013: Lane University Center, Frostburg State University Frostburg, MD USA [The Pedrito Martinez Group]
October 19th, 2013: Johnny D's Somerville, MA USA [The Pedrito Martinez Group]
January 25th, 2014: Rehearsal Hall, Jefferson Center Roanoke, VA USA [The Pedrito Martinez Group]
April 12th, 2014: NCSU Talley Student Center Ballroom Raleigh, NC USA [The Pedrito Martinez Group]