On Oct. 15, New York-based pianist and composer Zaccai Curtis brings his Grammy-winning project, Cubop Lives! to Seattle for the Earshot Jazz Festival. The project pays homage to a particularly unique time in jazz history, and though it effervesces with history, joy and style — it challenged Curtis deeply.
“I wasn’t going to release the record, because it wasn’t what was intended,” he said.
With Cubop Lives! Curtis set out, first and foremost, to highlight a moment in the 1940s when Cuban and Puerto Rican immigrants and Black jazz musicians in New York City began to intermingle and collaborate. This birthed a fresh musical style, “Cubop,” which blends the complex harmonies of bebop with syncopated Latin rhythms that stress off-beats.
“Cuban music is heavily syncopated. You have to have that mind for it, and I think bebop musicians were primed for that,” Curtis said, noting that jazz music is also heavily syncopated.
Trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, bandleader Machito, and percussionist Chano Pozo are beacons of Cubop. The record is also influenced by other Latin jazz masters, including bandleader, arranger and composer Eddie Palmieri and Afro-Carribean jazz pianist Noro Morales.
“They were putting things together that have never been done before in ways that have never been done before, and it changed all of music,” Curtis said.
Cubop Lives! also reflects Curtis’ upbringing and background. He’s Puerto Rican and Black, and spent formative years in Hartford, Connecticut, listening to a variety of styles.
Along with the soundtrack of funk and soul music at home, his music enthusiast father would take him, his brothers, and their friends by the van-load to see live music around Connecticut and New York. Curtis also was exposed to Latin music early through classmates.
“My first lesson in Latin music, I was in middle school, and it was another student, and he played merengue and salsa, and he showed me a montuno, and that was my first experience,” Curtis said, referring to a specific Afro-Cuban piano pattern.
Once Curtis and his brothers started studying music at The Artists Collective in Hartford, run by NEA jazz master Jackie Mclean and his wife, Dollie, their musical vocabulary expanded and they had the chance to rub shoulders with major jazz and Latin musicians.
“Andy Gonzalez and Jerry Gonzalez and Hilton Ruiz, they were coming into Connecticut because Jackie was bringing them in,” Curtis said.
In high school, Curtis gigged frequently with Cuban bass player Charles Flores, with whom he’d play jazz standards and Afro-Cuban music. He also took part in Grammy Camp, a national music industry program for high school students, where he met talented peers who go on to shake up the jazz world, like trumpeter Chief Adjuah and drummer Obed Calvaire.
“I knew I had a lot of work in front of me if I wanted to do it. That was the moment in time where I said ‘I want to do this,’” Curtis said.
Curtis is doing it. After attending New England Conservatory, he toured with the saxophonist Donald Harrison. He’s since performed with artists like trumpeter Brian Lynch, who performed with Eddie Palmieri’s band for two decades. Curtis also leads his own groups, the Zaccai Curtis Quintet and Sonido Solar.
Cubop Lives! features a specially-curated band: Curtis’ brother, bassist Luques Curtis, timbales player Willie Martinez, with percussionists Camilo Molina and Reinaldo De Jesus.
“I thought this band captured the music very well,” he said.
Cubop Lives! is composed mostly of innovative rearrangements of classic Cubop songs, but it also shows off a bit of Curtis’ composing chops — including a mambo tribute to Curtis’ favorite pianist Bud Powell called “Earl,” and the angular, bluesy “Black Rice” driven by an Afro-Cuban clave rhythm.
Curtis originally set out to do two volumes, and to include many more originals, but a combination of musician scheduling issues and unfinished compositions kept him from fulfilling his vision.
“The composer side of me said, ‘ah, it's not complete, just scrap it and move on to the next thing.’ But [percussionist] Camilo [Molina] actually sat me down and said, ‘Man, you gotta release it.’”
Curtis took the words of the accomplished conga and pandero player to heart. He surrendered to the music. As Curtis summed: “Sometimes what your intention is isn't really what's right. You have to bow to the music.”
Zaccai Curtis performs at Langston Hughes Performing Arts Institute on Oct. 15 at 7:30 p.m. as part of the Earshot Jazz Festival, which runs Oct. 7 - 25.
