Sue Miller relives the excitement of their Carnegie Hall concert on July 1st 1998. This 2 disc CD set provides us with fresh takes on BVSC favourites, covering 16 extended tracks of Cuban Son, Danzón, Chachachá and Bolero and featuring some outstanding performances by Omara Portuondo, Eliades Ochoa, Guajiro Mirabal and Rubén González…..
The reason for Buena Vista Social Club's success lies in the calibre of the musicians involved in this project - their deep knowledge of popular Cuban dance music and their years of experience as performers. They know this music inside out: the repertoire and the musical codes and gestures used to keep arrangements tight yet fresh and spontaneous. On this recording you can feel the tingle effect of their electrifying performance as for example when Ibrahim Ferrer cooks up a storm on 'Candela' with his passionate improvised 'pregones'. On 'Quizas Quizas Quizas' Omara laughingly sings a new coro, 'a la playa yo quiero a bailar porque el niche t'invita a guarachear' (At the beach I want to dance because El Niche invites you to come and have fun), which lifts 'Quizas Quizas Quizas' to a new level with Guajiro's exuberant trumpet soaring overhead heralding an exciting instrumental mambo build up followed by another spontaneous new coro, 'sobalo que sobalo ya' raising the temperature yet higher. All the musicians lock together and play as one creating the buzz and live energy that is very hard to capture on recordings but in evidence here particularly on the tracks 'Candela', 'Quizas Quizas Quizas' and 'Mandinga'. Rubén's solo piano playing is as virtuosic and cheeky as ever with a sublime interpretation of 'Siboney' and an adventurous improvisation on 'Mandinga'. Guajiro Mirabal injects passion into his searing trumpet calls and Eliades Ochoa's improvised vocals on 'El Cuarto de Tula' are rhythmically inspired and soaked in Santiago de Cuba 'sabor'. The live, 'descarga' jam session nature of this concert makes this a nice addition to the studio recorded album and the quotes from the musicians on the sleeve notes makes for interesting reading too.
