Elio Villafranca Abdou Mboup Duet at @exuberance

20 years ago he was a young Cuban emigre percussionist/pianist. Today, he teaches at Julliard and regularly conceives and headlines programs for Jazz at Lincoln Center and venues around the world. Much of that in between time, Elio Villafranca spent in Philly and we love him here.

Striking to me is that in every encounter with Elio I have heard entirely different concepts and tonal palletes. It’s both the depth and the breadth of his mastery of classical, jazz, national and folkloric musics which permit him to curate programs of original compositions or arrangements of extant work that have a particular synthesis and stunning coherence. ...

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20 years ago he was a young Cuban emigre percussionist/pianist. Today, he teaches at Julliard and regularly conceives and headlines programs for Jazz at Lincoln Center and venues around the world. Much of that in between time, Elio Villafranca spent in Philly and we love him here.

Striking to me is that in every encounter with Elio I have heard entirely different concepts and tonal palletes. It’s both the depth and the breadth of his mastery of classical, jazz, national and folkloric musics which permit him to curate programs of original compositions or arrangements of extant work that have a particular synthesis and stunning coherence.

Last year Elio debuted his spellbinding Cinqué-Suite of the Caribbean at the Appel Room, connecting melodies and rhythms of Puerto Rico, Santo Domingo, Haiti, Jamaica, and Cuba to their Congolese roots with a powerful band of collaborators. Last month JALC presented the brilliant Letters to Mother Africa, Elio’s curation of jazz works contemplating the lodestar of African identity—his own and those of Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Max Roach, Eric Dolphy, Randy Weston, Charles Mingus, and Wayne Shorter. It was a profoundly persuasive program with a powerful band including Billy Harper, David Murray, Dezron Douglas and Lewis Nash.

But it was Senegalese percussionist Abdou Mboup who stole the show, who sang and played a variety of instruments including the kora. Downbeat covered the show and Mboup’s role beautifully here. As the review notes, the connection between Villafranca and Mboup is undeniable.

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