Carlos Henriquez Extends the Tradition

Interview, News, From the Magazine, Carlos Henriquez, Wynton Marsalis

By Bill Milkowski I Mar. 5, 2019

Bassit Carlos Henriquez has recorded *The South Bronx Story*, both live and in the studio, and RodBros Music is set to issue the material later this year.
(Photo: Lawrence Sumulong)

“Carlos’ growth has been phenomenal on every level,” he said. “His sound, his knowledge of music, his arranging skills, his compositions, his thought process, the amount of music that he studied—it’s amazing how much he’s grown. He’s very studious, very serious about music. We always need more seriousness out here and higher levels of musicianship. And Carlos is operating on the highest level of musicianship you can imagine.

“Carlos is a natural,” Marsalis continued. “When he wrote his first arrangement for the band years ago, cats said, ‘Oh, you helped him.’ But I had not helped him at all. He just has a natural feeling and understanding for how to write for a large ensemble. The stuff he can do is astonishing. And I ain’t even talking about his playing. That’s something else, man. He can play in all kinds of styles, from Ornette Coleman’s music to a New Orleans two-beat groove to all the types of Afro-Latin music, fusion music with odd time signatures, things that require swinging bass. He just knows a lot of music and he can deal with a very high level of complexity.”

To date, Henriquez has arranged some 80 tunes for the big band and presided as producer or musical director of various JALCO concerts and recordings. “He’s been arranging for us for a long time,” Marsalis said. “He was our music director when we went to Cuba in 2010 [documented on the 2015 two-CD set Live In Cuba]. He picked all the music and he rehearsed us. And he wrote all the arrangements on the recent recording we did with Rueben Blades [2018’s Una Noche Con Rubén Blades on Blue Engine].”

Henriquez has appeared on dozens of albums in the company of Marsalis, including The Magic Hour (2004), Higher Ground: Hurricane Benefit Relief Concert (2005), From The Plantation To The Penitentiary (2007), He And She (2009), Vitoria Suite (a 2010 JALCO collaboration with flamenco guitar master Paco de Lucía) and The Abyssinian Mass (2016).

“When we did ‘Congo Square’ [a piece that premiered in New York during 2006 and later was documented on DVD in a performance at the 2007 Montreal Jazz Festival], we went through all the bell and drum patterns, and I never would’ve figured out the music, but I had Carlos teaching me what was going on,” Marsalis continued. “We would get together and listen to [albums by] Ghanaian master drummer Yacub Addy, and he would analyze everything so thoroughly. Carlos just understood so clearly what was going on.”

Henriquez applied some of those instincts to his auspicious debut as a leader, The Bronx Pyramid, a similarly autobiographical account of his South Bronx upbringing released in 2015 on Blue Engine. He has recorded The South Bronx Story, both live and in the studio, and RodBros Music is set to issue the material later this year.

In between Henriquez’s autobiographical projects came Dizzy Con Clave, the bassist’s inventive tribute to trumpet legend and bebop and Latin jazz pioneer Dizzy Gillespie.

In the liner notes, Henriquez writes, “I have arranged [Gillespie’s compositions for] octet with an authentic rhythmic approach that Dizzy would have loved. We brought the sounds of modern Latin jazz to the history that was bequeathed to us.”

In picking material for the recordings, some tunes were obvious choices: The clave feel already is evident on Gillespie’s Afro-Cuban classic “Manteca” and at least alluded to on “Tin Tin Deo.”

“For ‘Manteca,’ I basically kept the form as is, with little ornamentation,” Henriquez explained. “But then I opened it up and turned it into a salsa/Joe Cuba section towards the end.”

Henriquez and his crew of ace improvisers (trumpeters Michael Rodriguez and Terell Stafford, tenor saxophonist Melissa Aldana, trombonist Marshall Gilkes, pianist Manuel Valera, conguero-vocalist Anthony Almonte and drummer Obed Calvaire) re-imagine Dizzy’s beautiful ballad “Con Alma” as an alluring bolero and turn his anthemic “Bebop” into a frenetic, clave-fueled descarga with Almonte singing in Spanish over a percolating montuno: “Listen well to the rhythm that I’m bringing you.”

The iconic “A Night In Tunisia” gets an infectious clave-fueled mambo treatment, while “Kush” is rendered as an Afro-Cuban 6/8 jam. “Groovin’ High” becomes a cha-cha/mambo that evolves into a timba groove, and “Guarachi Guaro” is done as a cha-cha. Gilkes, Aldana and Valera provide outstanding solos in the set, while trumpeters Stafford and Rodriguez offer personal homage to Gillespie with their stratospheric blowing.

“Dizzy was an important part of a tradition that Carlos loves, so it’s important for him to give his take on that,” Marsalis said. “And being part of that lineage, that’s how we keep it going.”

Henriquez started his musical journey on piano, then switched to clarinet and finally classical guitar before choosing the upright bass in high school. “At the age of 10 or 11, I started taking classical guitar lessons and I was doing very well,” he recalled. “I auditioned for this music advancement program at Juilliard, which was offered on Saturdays for students, and I learned a lot there. But I became a bass player, because my concert band teacher at PS 30, Connie Grossman—who was a flute player with Yomo Toro—said to me, ‘Hey, I need a bass player. It’s the last four strings of the guitar. I know you can do it.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I’ll try it.’ Once I did, I was all in for the bass.”