With an all-star cast (including saxophonists
Paquito D’Rivera and Yosvany
Terry) and a cascading collision of musical
styles, Gomez and company reinvigorate
Bach’s repertoire on their new Sony
release, Bach In Havana. It’s been the
deft direction of Gomez that has guided
the group since day one. “We put a lot of
different styles of Cuban music on this
album,” Gomez tells me from his home in
Miami, as he prepares for the new
album’s release. “Like danzón, cha-chacha,
rumba, and guaguancó. But it’s all
about Johann Sebastian Bach’s music —
the sonata, the minuet, the prelude — with
a Cuban touch.”
The son of a musicologist mother and
a renowned classical pianist father,
Gomez grew up with a healthy dose of
traditional Cuban music, intertwined with
the sounds of his father practicing Bach
in the family home. Later, Gomez would
study at Cuba’s premier music conservatory,
the ENA (Escuela Nacional de Arte).
“All of us studied classical music in Cuba
for 15 years,” he continues. “For me, Bach
was the best of all. I learned so much
from him — the rhythm, the harmony, the
melody. With him, everything is perfect.
Especially with the rhythms on this CD,
you see how perfect they are, because
Bach’s music is so mathematical. It’s not
lyrical like Chopin or Liszt.”
Gomez would eventually escape Cuba
in pursuit of personal and musical freedom,
traveling at first to Guatemala in 1995,
where he worked as an arranger and producer,
and in 2000, to Miami. It was there,
in 2001, that he would form Tiempo Libre
with other like-minded Cuban musicians
who had a desire to blend seemingly
opposite musical styles into a sound all
their own. “At the beginning, we played
only jazz,” Gomez continues. “Then timba.
Then jazz, timba, classical, everything. We
also do musical theatre too. It’s all the time
something new.”
With the release of Bach In Havana,
Gomez masterfully merges a fierce, seemingly
limitless piano technique with jazz
colors, classical forms, and Cuban dance
figures. With a mixed bag of sounds like
that, it’s little wonder he’s eager to hit the
road in support of the new album. “I can’t
wait to see the reaction of people,” he
says. “It’s going to be the first time you’ll
see people listening to Bach’s music, and
at the same time dancing a conga!”