Pierrick Pedron & Gonzalo Rubalcaba
Biographie Pierrick Pedron & Gonzalo Rubalcaba
Gonzalo Rubalcaba
The multi-Grammy© Winner, pianist and composer Gonzalo Rubalcaba was already a young phenom with a budding career in his native Cuba when he was discovered by Dizzy Gillespie in 1985. Since, Piano & Keyboard Magazine selected him in 1999 as one of the great pianists of the 20th century, alongside figures such as Glenn Gould, Martha Argerich and Bill Evans; won two Grammys and two Latin Grammys, and established himself as a creative force in the jazz world.
He was born on May 27, 1963 in a musical family in Havana. His father, pianist, composer and bandleader Guillermo Rubalcaba, had also played in the orchestra of Enrique Jorrín, the creator of cha-cha-cha; his grandfather Jacobo Rubalcaba, was the composer of classic danzones, and his two brothers are also musicians. Gonzalo, a child prodigy who by the age of 6 was playing drums in his father’s orchestra, started his formal training two years later, with piano as his main instrument to, as he once recalled, “just to please my mother.” He graduated from the Institute of Fine Arts in Havana with a degree in composition and by his mid–teens he was working as both, drummer and pianist, in the hotels, concert halls and jazz clubs of Havana. Following graduation he stepped right into the life of the popular musician, touring Cuba, Europe, Africa and Asia with the fabled Orquesta Aragón and also as a sideman in jazz groups and, beginning in 1984, leading his own Afro-Cuban jazz rock fusion band, Grupo Proyecto.
The encounters with Gillespie and, in 1986, with Charlie Haden and then Blue Note Records president, Bruce Lundvall, set the stage to finally showcase Rubalcaba ́s talent before jazz audiences in the United States. These years are documented in a series of recordings in Havana and Frankfurt, Germany, including three superb recordings with his Cuban Quartet on the German label Messidor : Mi Gran Pasión (1987), Live in Havana (1989) and Giraldilla (1990). Rubalcaba moved to the Dominican Republic in 1991 and settled in Miami in 1996.
His international recording career, which includes titles such as Discovery – Live at Montreux, Images–Live at Mt. Fuji, The Blessing, Suite 4 y 20, Rapsodia, Diz and Imagine – Gonzalo Rubalcaba in the USA, has garnered him 16 nominations including both Grammys and Latin Grammys. He won Grammys for Nocturne (2001) and Land of the Sun (2004), two collections of Latin ballads and boleros recorded with bassist Charlie Haden; and Latin Grammys for Solo(2006) and Supernova (2002).
In 2010, Rubalcaba and businessman Gary Galimidi, founded 5Passion Records and since, the label has not only released Rubalcaba’s latest recordings such as Fe (2011), XXI (2012), Volcan (2014), Live Faith (2015), the Latin Grammy nominated Suite Caminos (2015) and Charlie (2016), but also album by artists such as Will Vinson, Ignacio Berroa, Yosvany Terry and many more. In addition to 5Passion, Gonzalo joined the "Top Stop Music" record label family in 2020 to record/release the Grammy-nominated Viento y Tiempo live at Blue Note Tokyo with the great singer Aymée Nuviola. Reflecting his interest in music education, Rubalcaba joined the faculty of the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music in 2015. In 2020, he founded his own academy Rubalcademy, offering remote Masterclasses to musicians across the world.
This same year, his independent Record label 5Passion Records was restructured in partnership with the businessman Ariel López, and released the album SKYLINE, a reunion of old friends Ron Carter and Jack DeJohnette. Gonzalo Rubalcaba's most recent nomination with singer, pop and soul music composer Jon Secada with the album "SOLOS" was for the 2021 Latin Grammys Awards, under the Oleta Music record label.
Pierrick Pédron
Ten years after starting out on the saxophone, Pierrick Pedron discovered the world of jazz at the age of 16 and joined the CIM two years later. He made his first recordings as a sideman alongside Magik Malik among others in 1994 and 1995.
Winner of the Concours de la Défense in 1996 within the Artaud-Blanchet formation, he continues his experiences within the framework of the "Nuits blanches" of the Petit Opportun, Douzetet de Sax with Lionel Belmondo and François Théberge, concerts with Alain Jean Marie, and an album of Ernie Hammes (Bob Mintzer, Lew Solof) which takes him to New York, where he will stay several months to play in clubs and meet American jazzmen .
In 2000 he recorded his first album, Cherokee with Baptiste Trotignon, Vincent Artaud and Franck Agulhon. He also performs with Michel Graillier in duo, and plays regularly with the Belmondo brothers.
In 2001, he was chosen by Henri SELMER Paris to design the future Alto Reference saxophone and the Spirit mouthpiece.
In 2004, he released Classical Faces as a sextet, accompanied by Pierre de Bethmann, Malik Mezzadri, Franck Agulhon, Thomas Savy and Vincent Artaud. He took part in the Marciac Festival as first alto of Wynton Marsalis' Big Band, who noticed him for his qualities as a soloist. In 2006, he released his album Deep in a dream, recorded in New York with Mulgrew Miller, Lewis Nash (two monsters of jazz across the Atlantic) and Thomas Bramerie.
In 2006, Pierrick Pédron took part in the double bassist Jacques Vidal's septet and recorded the album Mingus Spirit with the American trumpeter Eddie Henderson. In 2009 he made a 180-degree turn with an ambitious album entitled Omry, where he left classical jazz for a singular fusion between pop music and jazz, with original compositions that pay tribute to both the pop music of Pink Floyd and the Egyptian singer Oum Kalsoum.
In 2010, Pierrick continued to collaborate with Jacques Vidal, but this time in the quintet formula where he took part in the recording of Fables of Mingus. The following year, he signed on the Act label and continued his pop turn initiated by Omry with Cheerleaders, a conceptual album mixing jazz, pop and psychedelia.
In 2012, Pierrick clearly returns to the jazz-bop he loves so much in an acrobatic formula without piano, in trio (with Franck Agulhon, Thomas Bramerie). The album, entitled Kubic's Monk, exclusively features compositions by Thelonious Monk, some of which are very rarely played. The album received very good critical acclaim and was awarded the French record prize of the Académie du jazz.
In 2014, again for Act, Pierrick Pédron takes up his trio formula again, this time proposing jazz arrangements based on songs by the rock band from the 1980s and 1990s: The Cure. The album Kubic's Cure is a new step in Pierrick Pédron's singular approach to synthesizing all the music he loves by infusing it with the singular sound of his alto saxophone and a jazz rhythmic arrangement. In the same year 2014, he took part in Ricardo del Fra's album My Chet, My Song in homage to Chet Baker as well as Jacques Vidal's Cuernavaca based on the music of Charles Mingus.
In 2015 he releases the album And The, and in 2017 he returns with Unknown.
