Yuri Buenaventur
The Colombian pianist and singer, who touched hearts with his Latino cover of Ne me quitte pas, sings about love in the album Amame and his dance hits.
The recipe for Yuri Buenaventura’s salsa
A sensitive personality, a husky timbre and heady rhythms inspired by the greatest figures in the New York Latino music scene. And in fact it was there that this genre arose in the 1960s, specifically between Brooklyn and Harlem: a mixture of Cuban sound and Puerto Rican soul, seasoned with brass and the expressive poetry of African-American jazz.
After an absence of 6 years on the recording front, Buenaventura made his return with the album Amame, produced in 2024 by Vivienne Music Label. For the romantic singer with occasional melancholic undertones, this opus is “a musical dream, a tribute to the Latin music of New York,” blending pop ballads with urban percussion.
It brings together an international trio: Buenaventura himself, a Cuban bass player and a Spanish trombone player, all full of the energy of the “Big Apple”.
While emotions may dance within Yuri, here he is singing about love, that powerful, mysterious force, and the resilience of all those who stand and face it with dignity.
Exploring the loving feeling that transcends us and leads us to create, this concert also traverses the refined world of this salsa boss, with the emblematic songs that made him famous. There is nothing like hearing them live.
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Monty Alexander
A modern Jamaican jazz legend, he makes a whole section of this music’s history resonate through his hands. This piano virtuoso joyfully shares his repertoire with his audience.
“I love Jamaica. I love America. And I love them together even more than separated. I live in the rhythmic world of them both,” explains Monty Alexander, who left Kingston, the city he was born in, when he was 17.
Brought into the spotlight by Frank Sinatra when he arrived in the US, he accompanied the inventors of be-bop - Dizzy Gillespie and Milt Jackson amongst others, and became part of the great tradition of piano and orchestral swing.
Mentioned in The Fifty Greatest Jazz Piano Players of All Time (published by Hal Léonard), he has made no fewer than 75 records.
If Monty Alexander can access such freedom of expression, it is because he has an exceptional ear. His music is a subtle balance between melodic creativity, syncopated rhythms, refined vocals and this ability he has to “bring the temperature right up to a storm” as he says.
A master of piano trios, his spirited energy feeds into timeless interludes. In 2024, the musician celebrated his 80th birthday by bringing out D-Set, an album in which he tells his story through jazz standards from the war years, since he was born on D-Day.
For the Monte-Carlo Jazz Festival, he performs alongside the young and brilliant Luke Sellick on double bass and Jason Brown on drums, who join in with his harmonic digressions between the reggae beat and swing.
