ABUC is the title of the new album by Roberto Fonseca, the brilliant Cuban pianist who drew attention the first time he appeared at Havana's International Jazz Festival and who most recently was nominated for a Grammy Award in the category Best Latin Jazz Album. ABUC is the eighth album he's released under his own name to date and the first to appear on the famous impulse! label. It reveals another of his facets: storytelling. Teeming with rascally rhythms and burly brass, and woven from allusions, souvenirs and contrasts, ABUC is a kaleidoscope of dancing colours with which Roberto tells a story: the great and rich story of Cuban music, from yesterday to today. Ranging from contradanza and mambo to cha-cha-cha, danzon and bolero, and infused with the spirit of the descarga jam and hip-hop, Roberto narrates this story in his own manner; his tale swarms with subtly veiled references to the past, and he enumerates them in contemporary detours that are intriguing. En route, he prances over the keys of a Hammond organ, the sound of yesterday cutting across the sound of today (a touch of electro), and breaks free from the chronological thread to mingle different periods as the album's titles come and go or, at times, even inside one and the same piece. Drawing straight lines is not his thing. What Roberto Fonseca prefers is zigzags, jostled readings, versions inverted. You probably noticed that ABUC is a palindrome. It's “CUBA” written backwards. So the journey through time proposed here is no linear path: the 'loop' notion suits Roberto better.

Flagey, Hello Jazz Festival