Playground Ramón Valle, Omar Rodriguez Calvo, Owen Hart Jr.

• 1 Playground 03:58
• 2 El Reto 05:31
• 3 Fabio 07:52
• 4 Zwana 06:30
• 5 Siboney 05:51
• 6 Laberinto 05:42
• 7 Cinco Hermanas 06:34
• 8 The Trio 04:38
• 9 Free at Last 09:35
• 10 Baila Harold, Baila 06:12
• 11 Dilsberg Morning Light 09:08
• 12 Reverso 04:13
• Total Runtime 01:15:44

Info for Playground

After the birth of my firstborn son, Fabio, I needed some moments of retreat. The direction of my life changed from being impulsive and spontaneous to a life that was better organized and a little bit more structured. Little did I know that this new phase in my life was the kick-start for a new way to compose my music. Approaching life and music differently created new sounds, new projects and eventually, this new album PLAYGROUND.

To continue, I would love to share some of my sentiments out of which the music on PLAYGROUND was born.

The title song Playground reminds me of the feeling of being surrounded by children. Little kids playing, running in all directions, crying and laughing... The sensation of a new life, the feeling of a new start, new ideas and new hope.

At the same time in El Reto I’m talking about the great challenge of life. These are crazy times and you have to be strong, your antennas have to be very sensitive to all that’s around you in order to feel in what direction ‘sopla el viento’. Feeling which way the wind blows so that you can always be prepared.

In Fabio you will meet Ramon the father. Me taking care of my son, making sure he’s safe, teaching him about life and the dangers of it, playing and singing to him from my deepest Cuban feelings and letting him experience our Cuban roots and traditions.

In Zwana I tell the story of the love of my life and the mother of my child. It’s a tribute to our love history in a waltz tempo.

With Siboney I pay homage to the most famous Cuban composer Ernesto Lecuona. I’m always inspired by his work and I took one part of his composition in which I could let my own imagination fly. So it’s my own interpretation of this piece.

Looking at one of Fabio’s toys Laberinto made me realize that this toy with three paths entwined is so like life.

All the stages we go through emotionally; happiness, sadness, nostalgia and so on. Sometimes we get lost because we don’t know how to deal with this.

The piece Cinco Hermanas is a synthesis about all the moments I shared with my sisters. Sharing music, joking and laughing. The intro of this composition reminds me of a Cuban portrait.

Changing the mood of the tune on The Trio. To play with Omar and Owen is always a journey of a lot of fun. Three personalities brought together by our love of jazz music in this moment in time.

Sometimes you can say so many things, using a few notes in a different context. This happened with the ballad Free At Last that was born in a moment of free improvisation at the last day of the recording of my solo project Memorias. Dilsberg Morning Light, I wrote this piece in Dilsberg. I watched the beautiful process of the rising of the sun out of my window while I was practicing on the piano.

Live is unpredictable... Baila Harold, Baila is a piece I dedicate to my friend, a great dancer Harold Williams, who was killed in a street fight. I want to remember him the way he was, full of life and joy.

Reverso (inside out) is a piece I originally wrote as a classical composition for the piano but during rehearsal I got the idea to do a trio version and so the tune became a part of our repertoire. It’s a composition about the things we cannot see or feel unless the person we love shows it to us.

Ramón Valle, piano
Omar Rodriguez Calvo, double bass
Owen Hart Jr., drums

Ramón Valle
was born in 1964 and has been living in Holland since 1998. He is not just a brilliant technician with a direct attack and the ability to create the finest nuances of sound, but also is a full-blooded musician who understands how to open his heart and soul through the use of the keyboards. It requires extraordinary musicianship to be able to play in this way: his sound is never sickly or too thick. Seldom has the jazz piano sounded so warm and thus so free from frippery. Valle’s piano style can be considered particularly “authentic”. He has a well-developed approach which could be no-one else’s, which comes from having a great self-awareness. And he treads a narrow path, never straying into excess with his musical beauty. Or at least: he knows how to play “beautifully” because he knows how to avoid making his music sound kitsch. Valle himself has confirmed that despite his background as a Cuban musician, he doesn’t want to sound 100% typically Cuban but 100% typically Valle. Latin jazz which doesn’t descend into cliché is his aim. It’s most apparent in his piano solo pieces: no sweet playing around with his right hand and no excessive of rhythmic trumps. Valle shows his Cuban identity between the lines of his musical style. His piano approach is technically brilliant with a lyrical and melodic litheness. A rhythmic subtlety forms an implicit foundation – but that comes from the inner elements of his compact, personal approach, and not from its external effects.

Omar Rodriguez Calvo
was born in Matanzas, Cuba in 1973. He began his music studies (classical music, double bass) at the conservatory in Matanzas in 1984 and then studied double bass, electric bass, classical music, jazz and popular music at the School of Music (E.N.A - Escuela Nacional de Arte) and the I.S.A (Instituto Superior de Arte) in Havana from 1988 - 1992. He began playing with Argelia Fragoso at the age of 17 and later with Carlos Maza and Ramon Valle.

He moved to Hamburg in 1994 and has since played with artists such as Ramon Valle, the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra, the NDR Bigband, Joe Gallardo, Matthias Höfs, Jenaer Philharmonie, Tingvall trío, Kurt Elling, Orlando "Maraca" Valle, Nils Landgren, Horacio "El Negro" Hernandez, Perico Sambeat, Ernesto Simpson, Roy Hargrove, Mike Stern, Omar Sosa, Jesse van Ruller, Gerardo Núñez, Chano Dominguez, Ulf Wakenius, Orange Blue, Anette Maiburg, the formation Classica Cubana, the hr-Bigband (Parcifal Goes Habana)

In addition to three ECHO Jazz and five Gold Jazz Awards with the Tingvall Trio and the HANS for Production of the Year 2011, he received an ECHO Klassik with the formation Classica Cubana.

Further nominations: ECHO Jazz 2015 and 2016 as instrumentalist of the year national in the category double bass/e-bass[:en]1984 began to study classical music in Matanzas Cuba (E. V. A.) from 1988-1994 in La Habana (E. N. A.) and (I. S. A.) acoustic bass, electric bass, classic, and jazz. He has played with, Ramon Valle, Hamburger Symphoniker, NDR Bigband, Joe Gallardo, Matthias Höfs, Jenae Philharmonie, Tingvall-trio, Kurt Elling, Orlando "Maraca" Valle, Nils Landgren, Horacio "El Negro" Hernandez, Perico Sambeat, Ernesto Simpson, Roy Hargrove, Mike Stern, Omar Sosa, Jesse van Ruller, Gerardo Núñez, Chano Dominguez, Ulf Wakenius, Orange Blue, Anette Maiburg, the Formation Classica Cubana, hr-Bigband (Parcifal Goes Habanna).

This album contains no booklet.