Caribe

Ana Carla Maza is a woman of true ambition, being a virtuoso cellist, a songwriter and singer and a bandleader. The sextet the Cuban-born but France-based musician leads on this recording is a band of expats and locals, with Latin Americans and Europeans working together to produce gentle transformations of son montuno, huayno, cumbia and a slew of other styles including Brazilian forró and music from the French Antilles. It is effectively a chamber jazz group sans double bass performing salon music with folkloric touches – itself a highly respectable tradition in Latin America (think Ernesto Lecuona). The result is both absorbing and charming, although their determination to cover every angle including forró and Antillean perhaps goes further than needed. Sometimes a compulsion to include every available stylistic tic (in for example ‘Carnaval’ and ‘A Tomar Café (Latin Version)’) can feel a little overdrawn, but it’s still a very pleasant tour d’horizon from the Andes to the Islands. There is excellent playing by all, with Fidel Fourneyron’s trombone and Norman Peplow’s piano particularly confident, yet Maza’s cello is the star, whether slow and contemplative in ‘El Malecón’ or dramatic and emotional in ‘Astor Piazzolla’ (with a nod to Bach – or Heitor Villa-Lobos).