Chucho Valdés Quintet Plays the Standards: Jazz Ensemble in New York

About Chucho Valdés Quintet Plays the Standards

Chucho Valdés Quintet Plays the Standards is a working group built around the repertoire of American songbook and jazz canon, filtered through the bandleader’s long Cuban career. At Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City, the quintet approaches familiar material with the rhythmic and harmonic vocabulary Valdés developed in ensembles such as Orquesta Cubana de Música Moderna and later quintet projects under his name. The playing favors structure and conversational interplay over display, letting arrangement details carry the narrative. The project sits in a jazz lineage while keeping a clear Afro-Cuban accent.