Eliana Cuevas at Birdland
A Fiery Blend
Hamburg – Easy to see, the audience in the sold-out Birdland wants to dance and marvel at the same time. Canadian-based Eliana Cuevas’ music is no top-heavy Jazz, no pure Latin and especially no hackneyed Jazz-Pop. Good looking Eliana Cuevas and her four highly skilled musicians are playing two sets which are meant to be caught between those stools, the genres – which is how it should be since one can hardly move while sitting anyway.
Musical class on an international Jazz level meets driving Caribbean rhythms and first-class Latin-Pop. The secret behind that fiery blend lies in the stage performance of the Venezuelan born singer who gives herself away as a team player. Her touching voice, solid in every pitch, dominates the songs, but also withdraws to leave space for her musicians. That is how Luis Guerra’s virtuoso piano playing moves in the foreground as well as blind percussionist Luis Orbegoso’s impressive drumming using his bare hands. At the latest when you hear the splendid solo of bassist George Koller, who simulates the murmur of the sea with his instrument, you know that on that evening each instrument is a voice itself and each voice an instrument. The audience is marveling; there is not enough space to dance anyway.
A translated review of Eliana’s performance at Hamburg’s Birdland Club
Hamburg’s Morning Daily, 29 Sept. 2006. German original below.
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