Word: chucho
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...corporeally total experience, rather than a nexus between limbs and the mind. Alternately, when not gliding around the performers, Trueba breaks his musicians down into their component parts, focusing on agile fingers and tapping nimble feet. He savors the contradiction inherent in the great hulking character that is pianist Chucho Valdes. Valdes is an imposing, giant of a man both in height and in sheer solidity, not to mention musical reputation in the jazz community. His playing is an incomparable mixture of Cuban and North American impulses. Trueba reels in close on his mammoth hands, as they span octaves...
...times, Calle 54 has the feel of a music video sampler-brilliantly performed but somewhat contrived-but in the music's margins, when father and son Bebo and Chucho Valdes play a piano duet or when Chico O'Farril wanders aimlessly in the New York City night, the film becomes intensely real and touchingly personal. Calle 54 may indeed be Trueba's "way of repaying a debt of gratitude to Latin jazz," but for novices and the well-versed alike, it also serves to educate and foster a love of the music. Trueba has succeeded, for all the spectacle...