Briyumba Palo Congo

Chucho Valdés's piano-led recordings are studies in musical tension and dialogues. On Briyumba Palo Congo, he enlists a pair of percussionists, and Raúl Pineda Roque, the trap drummer, shares with Valdés a smolder that turns to conflagration when their tense interplays burst. Of course much of the fire is locked into the percussion dialogues where patterned drumming inspires improvisation amid fairly strict rhythmic controls. Valdés runs away from the pack in spots, shuffling across the keyboard leaving a wake of chromatic color. Roque does the same, exploding on his drums in fits of even tempos and being tugged back into the Cuban rhythmic rumble promptly by Roberto Vizcaíno Guillót's conga and batá drums, if not Valdés's own hyperimaginative harmonic runs. This is certainly not as flashy as Gonzalo Rubalcaba's dazzling explosions, and with the title suite's choral and vocal exclamations, it's rooted much more solidly in Afro-Cuban traditions. With his medium-hot pacing and his ability to blow solos wide open, it's clear that Valdés's years in Irakere barely prepared the ears for piano work of this magnitude. --Andrew Bartlett