Friday, March 8, 2024, at 8:00
Eliades Ochoa Guitar and Vocals
Raul Rodriguez Trumpet
Luis Ernesto Beltran Saxophone
Alberto Pantaleon Bass
Yosvel Elexei Bernal Pina Piano
The program will be announced from the stage.
There will be no intermission.
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association acknowledges support from the Illinois Arts Council.
The story of Eliades Ochoa began in the rural province of Santiago de Cuba in eastern Cuba, where he was born in 1946 into a family of farmers and musicians. By the age of six, he was playing the guitar and its uniquely ringing Cuban variant known as the tres. When he was twelve years old, the family moved to Santiago. To this day it remains the capital of the country’s folk music, heard particularly in the guajira traditions of the songs sung by peasants and farmers from the surrounding countryside. It is on this rich heritage that Ochoa’s music has always drawn.
By the early 1970s, Ochoa was a regular at the Casa de la Trova in Santiago, one of Cuba’s most famous music clubs. Ochoa played there as a member of Quinteto Oriente and with Septeto Tipico before he took over leadership of the renowned Cuarteto Patria in 1978. Inspired by Ochoa’s innate musical curiosity and ambition, Patria expanded its repertoire from the criolla, guaracha, and bolero songs the group had been playing for forty years and fashioned a more contemporary style. By the time he joined the Buena Vista Social
Club sessions, Ochoa had been leading Cuarteto Patria for eighteen years. Away from the group, in 1986 with Compay Segundo, he made the first recording of “Chan Chan,” the song the pair would revive a decade later as the atmospheric opening track of the Buena Vista Social Club album.
To the ninety-year-old Compay Segundo and the other Buena Vista ancients, Ochoa was the young’un, even though he had been a professional musician for three decades. His vitality made a potent contribution to Buena Vista’s success, both on the over 8 million albums sold and in Wim Wenders’s evocative, award-winning documentary film of the same name. It also led to Virgin Records Spain signing him as a solo artist and a string of fine albums.
His 2012 album Un Bolero Para Ti won four Latin Grammy awards, and he was also a key collaborator in World Circuit Records’ 2010 Grammynominated album AfroCubism, which brought together the finest musicians from Mali and Cuba. In 2018 Ochoa was also the first Cuban to be awarded the Latin Award Canada.
Also in 2018, his career was the subject of the documentary film Eliades Ochoa: From Cuba to the World, directed by Cynthia Biestek. Now, with the release of Guajiro, he adds a new and revealing chapter that weaves together all the threads and strands of his storied life and career into a definitive and compelling personal testament that honors his past while ambitiously taking his music into new pastures.
PHOTO BY MASSIMILIANO GIORGESCHI