Over the past 26 years, drummer Ignacio Berroa has boasted an impressive resume of sideman recording and performance duties with such maestros of the jazz world as Dizzy Gillespie, McCoy Tyner, Chick Corea, Freddie Hubbard, Jackie McLean, and Charlie Haden, as well as such Latin-Jazz masters as Mario Bauza, Tito Puente, Gonzalo Rubalcaba, and Danilo Perez. In addition, he has worked with Brazilian musical icons, Chico Buarque, Ivan Lins, Joao Bosco, Gal Gosta, and Lenny Andrade. But, remarkably, Berroa had yet to record his own project as a leader. That will change with the release of his exceptional debut, Codes, on Blue Note Records.
Co-produced by Berroa, Rubalcaba, and Ricardo (Eddy) Martinez, the eight-track album is a distinctive jazz-meets-Latin project that seamlessly weaves the intrinsically stylistic “codes” of both genres of music — as opposed to a swingin’ affair merely ornamented with Afro-Cuban rhythms or a Latin date with occasional infusion of the jazz lilt. The result is a CD where the swing and blues of jazz mesh organically with the Afro-Cuban clave and congas to create a rare hybrid of scintillating tempos and romantic melodies.
8 Tracks.