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“I wanted it to be a continuous celebration of life,” Rodriguez says of his new album, Coral Way.
(Photo: Gabriela Gabrielaa)In 2019, a decade after moving from Cuba to Los Angeles on Quincy Jones’ invitation, Havana-born jazz pianist Alfredo Rodriguez moved to Miami to be closer to family living in Florida. In the process of settling into his new home, the pandemic set in and Rodriguez, who’d been on the road for nearly a decade solid, came home to stay.
Though the pause in performing was “very sad” for the pianist, it had its silver linings. Along with being able to spend quality time with his new baby daughter, lockdown gave him more time for composing than he’d had in ages, and he found himself wanting to write an uplifting album at a very divisive and heavy time. And, like so many during the pandemic, he felt a drive to get back to his roots. Quickly, Rodriguez’s triumphant new record — Coral Way (Mack Avenue), which weaves the festivity, rhythmic syncopation and instrumentation of Latin styles with the harmony and spontaneity of jazz — began to come to life.
“I remember composing the music [while] walking the streets of Coral Way, which by the way, is the street where I live in Miami. And then everything was empty. You know, I didn’t see people, I couldn’t see people. I couldn’t play music; I couldn’t do much with other people [but] I always find myself looking for hope with my music. And I knew that whenever I had the opportunity to share this music with my audience, I wanted it to be a continuous celebration of life.”
As he approached the album, Rodriguez also set out to do something that isn’t being done by many composers at the moment: Bridging mainstream Latin sounds — like the Latin pop, timba, salsa, bachata, tango, reggaeton and bolero he considers to be part of the collective sound of Miami — with jazz. According to Rodriguez, he sees a bridge between North American popular sounds and jazz, but not as much with mainstream Latin music, a diverse and popular category that, in the U.S. alone, grew 55.29% in album consumption between 2020 and 2022, according to Billboard.
“Robert Glasper is a good example,” said Rodriguez, referring to the jazz and pop worlds. “Why? Because Robert is someone who plays jazz music and then at some point, he started mixing it with mainstream hip-hop and R&B and all of that, and still is someone who can be on both sides. So, I was thinking about this, we don’t really have anyone in the Latin world … right now that [is], exploring that cross-pollination. It’s really an empty spot.”
Digging into Rodriguez’s past, it’s easy to see how he is uniquely equipped to fill this vacancy. His father, Alfredo “Alfredito” Rodriguez, is a famous Cuban pop singer — the Elvis Presley of Cuba, as Rodriguez said. So, Rodriguez grew up attending his dad’s rehearsals and concerts and playing drums or any items he could reach. By the age of 6, Rodriguez’s parents put him in a school for classical music in Havana, where he began studying piano.
“I was going to the classical school of music in the mornings and the afternoon. And then I was playing with my dad. I started playing with my dad professionally when I was 12 or 13 years old,” said Rodriguez. “The classical school is very rigorous … and then I had the popular music school with my dad playing shows, big theaters and stadiums. It was a very positive situation for me because I could see music in many different ways.”
At 13, he was first exposed to jazz when his uncle gave him a recording of The Köln Concert, a historic 1975 performance by pianist Keith Jarret at the Opera House in Cologne, Germany. It was a rare find in Cuba, where recordings of American music have been scarce since ties between the two nations broke down during the Cuban Revolution in the 1950s.
“I can tell you that before the revolution in the ’40s, we had a really good link with the states and … I remember my dad telling me that people like Nat ‘King’ Cole, even Quincy [came to play],” said Rodriguez. “But after the revolution, everything fell apart. And then, you know, I was born in ’85. So, I didn’t grow up with any of those connections.”
Hearing that recording of an iconic American jazz pianist changed everything for Rodriguez; through that Jarret record, he discovered Thelonious Monk, Bill Evans and many other artists that inspired him to study jazz. It paid off. In 2006, when he was 21, Rodriguez was invited to represent Cuba at the Montreux Jazz Festival. Quincy Jones heard him there, and the legendary producer was so impressed he invited Rodriguez to move to the states to work with him.
“I said to my dad, my mom, everyone, I’m going to go to the states and cross the border from Mexico because Quincy Jones is telling me that if I make it there, Quincy Jones Productions will help me with my career,” he said. “So that was what I did.”
Since officially arriving in the U.S. in 2009, Rodriguez has been signed with Quincy Jones Productions and has released six albums, including Coral Way. And all along, even as he’s immersed himself in American culture and the jazz industry, he’s infused Latin musical ideas into his rhythmically exploratory and lyrical jazz approach.
But there is no album that combines his two musical worlds more completely and ambitiously than Coral Way. The nine-song set, which Rodriguez wrote at home over a three-year period, is the first that he’s self-produced and the first of his records to feature major mainstream Latin acts — like Cuban rock star Cimafunk and Spanish singer-songwriter Alana Sinkëy.
The record begins with the light, airy “Coral Way,” which layers melodic piano and guitar over punctuated brass and spacious bass and drums. From there, the album proceeds to draw from a diverse collection of Latin and jazz sounds — alto saxophone and guiro percussion, improvisation and mariachi brass, “Für Elise” and piano montuno — melded together in a fresh way.
“This is not an album where I said, I’m just going to go a little more pop,” Rodriguez explained. “This has been a natural process for me. The way I’ve been arranging my music for live shows for many years now, it’s been going into [the sound] of Coral Way. I’ve been exploring more and more with mainstream [Latin] music styles and rhythms that I didn’t [find] that attractive maybe 10 years ago.”
Rodriguez says his voracious and wide listening, as well as his social media presence, played a part in his decision to soak Coral Way in Latin polyrhythms, handheld percussion, guitar, dance beats, brass and more. He finds that his audiences on Instagram really respond to his infusion of jazz with music like timba, for example, a Cuban salsa style that people in North America are less exposed to.
But, most importantly, Rodriguez feels more emphatic than ever about showing the intersections between all these styles and cultures, to foster connection and hope.
“That is always my goal,” he said. “I’ve always been trying to [collaborate] with [artists] from different parts of the world because … I learn from those cultures that I am not a part of. For me, recording an album is something I enjoy so much because I [get to] bring people together.” DB
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