Gonzalo Rubalcaba Trio / special guest Anna Maria Jopek - Jazz Women's Day. - NOSPR

In 1999, the multi-Grammy® Winner, pianist, and composer Gonzalo Rubalcaba was selected by Piano & Keyboard Magazine as one of the great pianists of the 20th century, alongside figures such as Glenn Gould, Martha Argerich and Bill Evans. He has won three Grammys® and Four Latin Grammys, 19 Grammys nominations and EMPIK Bestsellers, all of which has established him as a creative force in the jazz world.

Gonzalo was born on May 27, 1963, into a musical family in Havana. His father, pianist, composer, and bandleader Guillermo Rubalcaba, had also played in the orchestra of Enrique Jorrín, the creator of cha-cha-cha; his grandfather Jacobo Rubalcaba, was the composer of classic danzones, and his two brothers were also musicians. Gonzalo, a child prodigy who by the age of 6 was playing drums in his father’s orchestra, started his formal training two years later. He chose the piano as his main instrument.

Gonzalo Rubalcaba grew up in a musical household, surrounded by his siblings and ancestors. Gonzalo Rubalcaba's musical development was complemented by a classical education at the conservatory, then at the Institute of Fine Arts in Havana, where Rubalcaba studied percussion, piano and composition. These two sources, the family and the conservatory, developed Rubalcaba's percussive, strikingly melodic music.

He graduated from the Institute of Fine Arts in Havana with a degree in composition and by his midteens he was working as both drummer and pianist in the hotels, concert halls and jazz clubs of Havana. Following graduation, he stepped right into the life of the popular musician, touring Cuba, Europe, Africa and Asia with the fabled Orquesta Aragón and as a sideman in jazz groups and, beginning in 1984, leading his own Afro-Cuban jazz rock fusion band, “Grupo Proyecto”.

Rubalcaba gained worldwide fame in the 1980s through performances with Charlie Haden and Paul Motian. During his worldwide touring career, he performed with artists such as Dizzy Gillespie, Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock. Multiple international music award nominee and award-winner Rubalcaba will come to the NOSPR in Katowice with his “iron” trio consisting of:

Gonzalo Rubalcaba - piano

Ricky Rodriguez - bass

Ernesto Simpson - drums

Special guest of the concert will be Anna Maria Jopek

AMJ born on 14.12.70 in Warsaw. As a child of the soloists of the Mazowsze band, she grew up in the world of art. Her artistic and at the same time folk character left a significant mark on the singer's artistic sensitivity. She continues to move in this aesthetic to a considerable extent to this day.

The stylistic framework of AMJ's activity is formed by three areas of musical experience: her love of folklore brought from home, her classical music education (she graduated from the piano class at the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music) and her love for jazz. These three planes appearing in Jopek's work in different proportions, keep her work within a wide stylistic spectrum, from (especially in the early period) works in the convention of modern pop, through her original own stylistically autonomous compositions, to that part of her work which is often referred to today as “contemporary eclectic jazz”. A common feature of all her artistic activities is an extraordinary attention to level. Both in the conceptual, performance-interpretation and production layers. It is this level of professionalism, the highest artistic value and constant development that has led to the fact that today AMJ has to her credit (in addition to most of the most prominent Polish performers) cooperation with such giants of world jazz as Pat Metheny, Branford Marsalis, Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Makoto Ozone, Richard Bona. Each AMJ concert to witness is a small slice of the path of her development that she is constantly following.