As is the case with Transcribe!, AmazingSlowdowner and Emulator X, if you showed Tutti's new music education software to a musician from the Dark Ages (2005 or earlier), he or she would pass out in disbelief. In the case of Tutti, you see a whole band playing together in little video squares on your screen. If you click on a musician, you now see four different camera angles of just that musician and there are many other bells and whistles, like slowing the tempo and viewing sheet music as it scrolls along under the video.

The best news is that Vasík Greif and Michael Caba - the Czech Republic geniuses who brought you the video for the books on Alain Pérez and Melón Lewis - have filmed Calixto Oviedo playing all four parts (each with four camera angles) for a variety of Cuban rhythms. This will be a Tutti product soon!

Vasík, Calixto and Marek Caba (Calixto cooked the pasta - a man of many talents)

Calixto will also be playing in New York on July 9 as part of the New Dimensions Jazz series with Calixto's Way, featuring Gustavo Ramírez (ex-NG), Armando Gola (ex-Manolín), Mauricio Herrera (ex-PFG) and Carlos Averhoff, Jr. (ex-Issac). What a band!

Meanwhile, Calixto's son, Yulién, has rejoined Charanga Habanera - at least for their upcoming tour, replacing the departing Randy Martínez - Aned and Lachy Fortuna have apparently also left the group.

Here's Yulién with fellow ex-Charanguero Tirso Duarte, the subject of the soon-to-be-released Beyond Salsa Piano Vol. 14, which, in addition to being packed with piano tumbaos that will leave you speechless, tells the great Charanga Breakup story in greater detail than ever before, with lots of juicy new details from the world's leading Charangalogist, Majela Serrano van der Heuson.

Havana d'Primera: Next tour stops are today in Folsom California, May 30, at the historic Los Globos club in LA, and the two nights at Yoshi's SF, next Friday & Sat. 5-31 and 6-1 and then in Santa Cruz at Kuumbwa on Tues. June 4. These last two will sell out soon. You can take your HdP ticket stub to Cócomo afterwards on Saturday to hear Mayimbe for $5 - and their set starts after midnight, so you can do it without missing a note. Sorry for being Bay Area-centric here, but seriously, Miami, you've got nothing to be centric about. Miami is absolutely the least supportive Cuban music city in the world. Hang your heads in shame - and your basketball team is also choking. Okay, enough cross-coastal trash talk for one post - but this ain't over! [Kevin Moore]

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UPDATE 2: Sunday's second set was incredibly intense. Click here are Patrick Hickey's photos. Peter Maiden's gallery should be up later tonight. '

TIMBALIVE IN NEW YORK: This show is coming up Friday at SOB's.

photo by Peter Maiden

UPDATE: Saturday shows were great, and packed to the rafters. Final 3 hour show tonight at 7:00 is selling briskly. LINK FOR TICKETS

Review of Friday's Performance. 

Knowing I had two more nights at Yoshi's SF ahead of me, I just relaxed and let my first-ever Havana d'Primera concert wash over me. And I kept finding myself asking ... what is it about this band?

Maybe the better question is what Havana d'Primera isn't. It's not an "espectáculo" - it's not "de película" - it doesn't have a lot of choreography, gimmicks or bravura. It's a bunch of great musicians playing great songs and this one guy standing up there just singing his heart out.  Who else sings and plays with this kind of pure, unaffected, real emotion? Alexander Abreu radiates an overpowering sense of integrity ... of honesty ...  of poetry ... in his voice, in his facial expressions, in the way he moves, and God knows, in the way plays that trumpet. He played one gut-wrenching, soaring high note over a ballad accompanment that made want to scream - like that guy in the audience at Lincoln Center in 1964 when Miles Davis built the same kind of climax on that legendary version of Stella by Starlight. Actually he played quite a few notes like that. And just as important, he didn't play any notes that he didn't mean - that didn't start deep in his gut and end up deep in yours.

That's one thing about Havana d'Primera - their use of solos. Instead of the standard once-a-night descarga where everyone gets a solo over a traditional vamp and plays the obligatory hot licks and quotes from Stormy Weather, the solos in this band are key parts of the emotional arcs of the songs in which they appear.

... and then Alain Pérez sat in! He started out singing - improvising beautifully about the events of the night, instigating several coros that HdP's coristas nailed instantly in harmony.

Then he switched to bass and lit a raging fire under a band that had already been throbbing hot for several hours. It was torrid bomba the likes of which I haven't heard since ... well, since Alain with Issac's band in 1997. I managed to film the vocal and the first minute of so of the bass part before my camera screwed up on me. Maybe someone else got the rest. I'll post mine to youtube soon.

Another thrill for the Bay Area was the presence of local hero Carlos Caro, who's playing all six shows as HdP's regular bongosero didn't make the tour. Well, he's "local" to us because he's been here for 20 years, but in Cuba, Carlos, along with current HdP guitarist Rogelio Nápoles played in Opus 13, and was then a founding member of Paulito FG y su Élite, where Alexander later got his start. In many ways, HdP is the next step in that lineage of great bands. Almost everyone in the band played with one or more of Paulito, Issac, Manolín, Revé, Manolito and Klímax.  

Havana d'Primera's mission statement was to restore the power, dignity, musicianship and creativity of the late 90s - and they're doing that - but in the dark, riveting intensity of Alexander Abreu they've also added some very new - and very real - and deeply moving. [Kevin Moore]

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Actually, this freshly posted, nicely filmed YouTube is from Paris, but this is the lineup that's currently in the US Touring. Next posted show is at Los Globos in LA Thursday, although Sobredosis (the coach company) has posted something about Fulton and a second LA gig - let us know if you hear any details). [Kevin Moore]

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Manley "Piri" López - photo by Peter Maiden

Peter Maiden was on hand to photograph Friday night's show and will post a full gallery in the coming days. There are still two more workshops and two more concerts this weekend. Of special interest is the presence of guarapachanguero extraordinaire Manley "Piri" López of Los Chinitos fame. Click "continue reading" for two other amazing preview shots.

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