A Creole Christmas Gift: Concert and Cocktails, featuring seven-time, Grammy-award winning jazz pianist Chucho Valdés and Guggenheim Fellow Etienne Charles is set for the National Academy for the Performing Arts (NAPA) on December 16.

The event will showcase Caribbean music legend Valdés in the Royal Quartet, and globe-trotting Trinidadian musician Charles and his Creole Soul band in a celebration of appreciation through music, food and festivity, with a focus on how the wider Caribbean celebrates Christmas season, a media release said.

Cuban pianist, composer, and arranger Valdés is the most influential figure in modern Afro-Cuban jazz, the release said. In a career spanning more than 60 years, both as a solo artist and bandleader, Valdés has distilled elements of the Afro-Cuban music tradition, jazz, classical music, rock, and more, into a deeply personal style that was initially presented in his landmark ensemble Irakere, and in his parallel and subsequent careers as a solo performer and a small-group leader.

[caption id="attachment_1043732" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Etienne Charles, right, and his Creole Soul Band will perform at A Creole Christmas Gift: Concert and Cocktails. - Anisto Alves[/caption]

With over two dozen albums, his music places him at the forefront of the Caribbean aesthetic that signifies excellence; seven Grammy and five Latin Grammy awards, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Latin Academy of Recording Arts and Science last year, and induction into the Latin Songwriters Hall of Fame are among his many accolades.

His Royal Quartet featuring the sublime musicianship of bassist José Armando Gola, percussionist Roberto Junior Vizcaíno Torre and drummer Horatio "El Negro" Hernández.

Charles returns to his Creole Christmas mode which he captured in his 2015 album of the same name and in concerts here in 2015 and 2019, for a wider engagement of holiday music from the perspective of that fortunate traveller, that creole soul. Charles re-imagines, from his Caribbean perspective, the music celebrating the Christmas season with classics from the Caribbean, American and European holiday songbooks with his stellar ensemble featuring jazz and folk musicians from around the globe.

[caption id="attachment_1043733" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Vaughnette Bigford - David Reid[/caption]

This concert will also feature Venezuelan cuatro master Jorge Glem, alongside Trinidadian favourites Vaughnette Bigford, David "Happy" Williams, Robbie Greenidge, Clarita Rivas, and Pasqual Landeau. The creole rhythms from New Orleans down to the Caribbean coast of Venezuela are mined for inspiration to celebrate the reflection and return of the native gaze to local audiences in need of an antidote to artificial snow, the release said.

Organisers say A Creole Christmas Gift: Concert and Cocktails is more than a jazz concert. It is a creole holiday celebration of people in the Caribbean. The music comprises original and traditional: Venezuelan parang, parranda, Christmas kaisos, Afro-Cuban jazz th

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