Alfredo Rodriguez

Born in Havana in 1936 and disappeared in Paris in 2005, Alfredo Rodríguez developed a career spanning Cuba, New York, Miami, and France, at the crossroads of Latin jazz and Cuban music. A pianist and bandleader, Rodríguez is part of an Afro-Cuban aesthetic nourished by his Cuban roots, descarga, bolero and danzón, with playing marked by the pianistic traditions of Peruchín and Lilí Martínez, but also by a more harmonic sensibility inherited from the classical repertoire. Based in New York in the early 1960s, he played with numerous Latin ensembles, notably Conjunto Sensación, Joe Cuba, José Fajardo, Charanga 76, before accompanying or recording with artists such as Carlos "Patato" Valdés, Tito Puente, Celia Cruz, or Justo Betancourt. From 1983, his settlement in Paris opened a new phase, more focused on his personal projects. Alfredo Rodríguez then published Sonido sólido in 1983, Monsieur oh la la in 1985, Cuba-New York-Paris in 1991 and Para Yoya in 1993, followed by Cuba linda in 1997 and Cuban Jazz in 2002. He is also found in Jesús Alemany's Cubanismo venture as well as the pan-African project Africando. Until the end of his life, Alfredo Rodríguez maintained a very rhythmic approach to the piano, dense but legible, where improvisation remains linked to the forms and pulsations of Cuban music.