From Cuba to avant-garde

Posted on Fri, Oct. 21, 2005

From Cuba to avant-garde

By Andrew Gilbert
Special to the Mercury News

When Cuban pianist Omar Sosa arrived in the Bay Area in the mid-1990s,
his impact on the jazz scene was so swift and powerful that even though
he moved to Barcelona at the end of 1999, his presence can still be felt
here today.

In much the same way, the arrival in New York of Cuban drummer Dafnis
Prieto in 1999 sent shock waves through the jazz scene there. In a city
overflowing with prodigious young drummers, Prieto was a sensation.
Innovative bandleaders jostled to recruit him for their projects, and he
became an essential part of ensembles led by such visionaries as Henry
Threadgill, Steve Coleman and Don Byron. Before long the New York Times
took note.

Bay Area debut

Prieto, 31, makes his Bay Area debut as a bandleader tonight at the
Great American Music Hall as part of the San Francisco Jazz Festival --
on a double bill with Sosa, who'll be introducing his new quartet
featuring Geoff Brennan on acoustic and electric basses, saxophonist
Eric Crystal and drummer Marque Gilmore.

Prieto, who also appears at Kuumbwa in Santa Cruz on Saturday, will be
performing with his quintet featuring Cuban brothers Yunior Terry on
bass and Yosvany Terry on saxophones and chekere, Berkeley-raised
saxophonist and percussionist Peter Apfelbaum, and Cuban pianist Osmany
Paredes.

To say that Prieto has flourished since settling in New York would be an
understatement. In addition to leading several bands of his own, he
maintains a hectic schedule as a sideman and is quickly gaining stature
as a composer. Jazz at Lincoln Center, for instance, commissioned him to
write ``A Song for Chico'' for its Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra; the piece
premiered recently to plaudits from the critics.

Last week he recorded with an ensemble for which he has been composing
for several years, featuring Yosvany Terry on saxophones, Jason Lindner
on organ and keyboards, the brilliant string players Christian House on
violin and Redwood City-raised Dana Leong on cello, with special guest
Threadgill on alto sax.

That project follows his first album as a leader, ``About the Monks''
(Zoho), an enthralling quintet session released earlier this year
featuring Terry, trumpeter Brian Lynch, pianist Luis Perdomo and bassist
Hans Glawischnig.

``I've made a lot of records,'' Prieto says, ``and I've worked with
really interesting musicians. This life I've been having here the past
six years was almost impossible to make happen in Cuba, and it has
really raised my motivation to make music.''

He started studying classical European tympany at the School of Fine
Arts in Santa Clara, Cuba. At age 14, he moved to Havana, where he
continued his classical education at the National School of Music.

Although Prieto is steeped in Cuban rhythmic traditions, his music is
not Latin jazz, at least not as the term has come to be understood. Like
Yosvany Terry, Perdomo, David Sánchez, Miguel Zenón, John Benítez and
Antonio Sánchez, Prieto is at the forefront a new generation of
musicians hailing from Latin America and eager to explore the advanced
jazz concepts of Threadgill, Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane, while
developing their own compositional voices.

Prieto describes great Cuban percussionists such as Tata Guines,
Changuito and Pancho Quinto as mentors, but he cites the great trap
drummer Elvin Jones as his primary source of inspiration. Hungry for
contact with leading jazz players, he says he felt he had to leave the
isolation of Cuba in order to pursue his creative vision.

``I started feeling myself suffocated,'' Prieto says. ``I wanted to do
more research and interact with different kinds of musicians who aren't
in Cuba, like Henry Threadgill and Steve Coleman.

``It's not like I feel that since I come from Cuba I represent Cuba in
all my writing. Whenever I play with Steve Coleman or Threadgill, most
of the time it has nothing to do with Cuban music. Those persons gave me
a lot of knowledge. I learned a lot of things from them that have really
helped me in how I'm writing music now, how I'm directing a band and how
I focus my ideas through a band.''

Prieto first glimpsed the tremendous musical opportunities available in
the United States when he participated in the 1998 Stanford Jazz
Festival as a member of Yosvany Terry's band, Columna B.

Barcelona and Toronto

Though he didn't perform with Apfelbaum at the time, his wife, Judith,
danced with Apfelbaum's group for one piece. When Prieto left Cuba later
that year, he first moved to Barcelona, and then spent much of 1999 in
Toronto, joining the Afro-Cuban jazz ensemble led by the Canadian
soprano saxophonist Jane Bunnett. When Prieto moved to New York in 1999,
he and Apfelbaum started collaborating on each other's projects. They've
done duo performances, and Prieto is featured on Apfelbaum's new album
``It Is Written'' (Act Music).

``What he does compositionally is very interesting,'' Apfelbaum says.
``There's obviously an Afro-Cuban foundation, but he's one of the new
generation of musicians who listens to everything. There's a strong
contemporary classical element in his writing. When he solos, or
sometimes even when he's playing behind you, he's found yet another way
to subdivide the beat. He can take four bars, and go from `one' of the
first bar to `one' of the next bar in a way that nobody has ever done
before.''

The Dafnis Prieto Quintet

With Yunior and Yosvany Terry,

Peter Apfelbaum and Osmany Paredes

Where: Great American Music Hall,

859 O'Farrell St., San Francisco

When: 8 tonight

Admission: $24-$36; (415) 776-1999, www.sfjazz.org

Also: 8 p.m. Saturday at the Kuumbwa Jazz Center, 320-2 Cedar St., Santa
Cruz; $15-$18; (831) 427-2227, www.kuumbwajazz.org

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