Latin Jazz

Jose Curbelo, a Latin jazz bandleader, agent and promoter who helped popularize the cha-cha in the United States and made Tito Puente a star, has died. He was 95. A resident of North Miami Beach, Curbelo died Friday of heart failure at a hospital in Aventura, Fla. Curbelo was born Feb. 18, 1917, in Havana to a Cuban mother and a Cuban American father who played violin with the Havana Philharmonic Orchestra. He began formal musical training at age 8 and by 16 was playing with the orchestras of Los Hermanos Lebartard and flutist-composer Gilberto Valdes, and he co-founded Orquesta Havana Riverside.

SAN FRANCISCO - "This is one of my favorite rooms," said SFJAZZ founder and Executive Artistic Director Randall Kline, smiling as he stepped over exposed pipes and dusty planks in the SFJAZZ Center. "Then again, they're all my favorite rooms," he added. You'll forgive Kline for sounding a bit excited. This month, construction on the $63-million SFJAZZ Center will finish with a grand opening scheduled for Jan.21, Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Two days later, a roster of opening-night performers that includes McCoy Tyner, Joshua Redman, Chick Corea and Esperanza Spalding (with Bill Cosby as master of ceremonies)

Since it opened last year, the Conga Room has enlivened the city's music scene with the best in Latin dance and jazz bands. To celebrate its first anniversary, the Conga brings in timbale maestro Tito Puente, the ageless mambo king, for two nights of salsa, cha-cha and other spirited sounds. * Tito Puente, Conga Room, 5364 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles. $35 to $100. Also Friday. (323) 938-1696. also Sunday with Grammy all-American High school Band at the Jazz Bakery, 3233 ZHelms Ave., Culver City.

When the Recording Academy consolidated last year's Grammy nominations by eliminating 31 categories in R&B, American roots music, classical, Latin, jazz, country, pop and rock fields, the changes felt out of key for some musicians. There were grumblings, protests, petitions and a group of Latin jazz artists even filed a class action lawsuit to contest the restructuring, which brought the total number of categories down to 78 from 109. This year, the Recording Academy has added three new categories to previously scaled back fields with the addition of awards for classical compendium, Latin jazz album and urban contemporary album.

Among the accolades heaped on Cuban pianist Chucho Valdés is a honorary citizenship from the city of New Orleans. "The mayor gave me the title," Valdés, 71, said recently, speaking by phone in Spanish and plainly savoring the memory. It's not the first time that New Orleans has swapped gifts with Cuba, or vice versa. Culturally, as well as economically, they've been locked in a centuries-long clench that has survived shifting musical currents, to say nothing of revolutions, economic embargoes and inflammatory political rhetoric.

* Carmelo's Ristorante, 3520 E. Coast Highway, Corona del Mar. Imago plays Brazilian jazz Sundays and Tuesdays. (949) 675-1922. * Odessa, 680 S. Coast Highway, Laguna Beach. Live jazz nightly. Watch for Latin jazz artists such as Poncho Sanchez, Bobby Redfield and others. (949) 376-8792. * Renaissance Dana Point, 24701 Del Prado. Latin jazz once or twice a month. Bobby Redfield plays Friday at 8:30. Format also includes blues, jazz and rock. No cover. (949) 661-6003.

Highlights of the Latin Jazz Institute's Los Angeles Latin Jazz Festival: JESUS "CHUCHO" VALDES: Valdes, 57, is widely regarded as one of the two top jazz pianists to ever come out of Cuba, the other being Gonzalo Rubalcaba. In 1973, Valdes, a virtuoso from age 13, founded Cuba's famed pop group, Irakere. Now focused on a solo career, Valdes combines classical and jazz harmonies with traditional Afro-Cuban sounds.

If veteran bandleader Eddie Palmieri's prediction that Latin jazz will "overwhelm the 21st century" turns out to be correct, Justo Almario and Rudy Regalado will have a lot to do with it. Performing at the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre Saturday night in "A Grand Night of Latin Jazz," saxophonist Almario and bandleader/timbales player Regalado led their groups through a stirring, ever-fascinating collection of foot-tapping Latin jazz.

Award-winning trumpeter Bobby Rodriguez and the Latin Jazz Connection kick off the Luckman Family Series of performances Saturday at 2 p.m. at the Luckman Theatre at Cal State L.A. The performance will be preceded by family workshops exploring jazz. Admission: $7. Information: (213) 343-6600.

Guitarist Ricardo Silveira and saxophonist Justo Almario will provide Latin jazz Thursday at 7:30 p.m. at the Santa Monica Pier Twilight Dance Series. More information on the free Thursday night concerts is at (310) 458-8900.

Thousands of people gathered in the new Grand Park on Saturday to watch aerial dancers scale City Hall, performers splash in the fountain and other festivities marking the opening of downtown Los Angeles' major new green space. The rectangular park, which stretches from the top of Bunker Hill to the base of City Hall, has been partially open since midsummer. The opening of the lower section completes the project, which includes lawns, fountains and a cafe plaza. The project has been billed as L.A.'s Central Park, and officials hope it will blossom into a cultural hub. But for some visitors Saturday, it was enough just to have a new urban retreat.

Jose Curbelo, a Latin jazz bandleader, agent and promoter who helped popularize the cha-cha in the United States and made Tito Puente a star, has died. He was 95. A resident of North Miami Beach, Curbelo died Friday of heart failure at a hospital in Aventura, Fla. Curbelo was born Feb. 18, 1917, in Havana to a Cuban mother and a Cuban American father who played violin with the Havana Philharmonic Orchestra. He began formal musical training at age 8 and by 16 was playing with the orchestras of Los Hermanos Lebartard and flutist-composer Gilberto Valdes, and he co-founded Orquesta Havana Riverside.

Drawn with a moody artistry, shaded by its Cuban musical roots, "Chico & Rita" is a buttery rich animated tale of love, jazz, showbiz, fame and politics in the late '40s and early '50s that is as catchy as its tunes. This is definitely animation for grown-ups — its look is voluptuous, sexy and sultry; its Latin-inflected Dizzy Gillespie sound is seductive; and its story of young lovers whose passions are tested is timeless. It all begins in Havana in the pre-Castro years when rich Americans jetted down for entertainment.

Latin jazz may have experienced a diminished profile this year with the controversial elimination of categories in this year's Grammys, but there will be no evidence of that at this concert presented by the L.A. Philharmonic. Multiple Grammy winner Chucho Valdes will perform a variety of hip-shaking tunes with the Afro Cuban Messengers, and the pairing of Poncho Sanchez with trumpeter Terence Blanchard will explore Afro-Cuban jazz with selections from their album-length collaboration "Chano y Dizzy!

Among the accolades heaped on Cuban pianist Chucho Valdés is a honorary citizenship from the city of New Orleans. "The mayor gave me the title," Valdés, 71, said recently, speaking by phone in Spanish and plainly savoring the memory. It's not the first time that New Orleans has swapped gifts with Cuba, or vice versa. Culturally, as well as economically, they've been locked in a centuries-long clench that has survived shifting musical currents, to say nothing of revolutions, economic embargoes and inflammatory political rhetoric.

MICHELLE NICASTRO Singer-actress appeared in L.A.'s 'Les Miserables' Michelle Nicastro, 50, an actress and singer who was in the original Los Angeles production of "Les Miserables," died Thursday at her home in Toluca Lake after a long battle with cancer, said a spokesman for her husband, TV producer Steve Stark. Nicastro originated the role of Eponine in "Les Miserables," which opened in Los Angeles at the Shubert Theatre in 1988. Her other stage credits included "A Little Night Music" and "Merlin.

Latin Jazz artist Poncho Sanchez performed to an audience of more than 300--mostly children and their parents--at the Madrid Theatre as part of the Monday Morning Concerts for Kids series. Miguel A. Cortez, manager of the Madrid Theatre, said Sanchez's concert was the best production he has seen since the theater's opening late last year. "It was great to see the smiles on the kids' faces," Cortez said. "It went so well we are all still talking about it, and I bet the kids are, too."

Maybe the prospect of watching Oscar De La Hoya and Felix Trinidad in the "Fight of the Millennium" was just too tempting. How else to explain the modest turnout for the Third Annual "Con Ritmo y Sabor Latin Jazz Festival '99" Saturday night at the Watercourt at the California Plaza?" With a solid lineup, an attractive venue and a reasonable ticket price, the place should have been jammed and jumping. But it wasn't.

Francisco Aguabella, an Afro-Cuban percussionist considered a master sacred drummer who also had a wide-ranging career in jazz and salsa, has died. He was 84. Aguabella died Friday of cancer at his Los Angeles home, said his daughter Menina Givens. His career "bears testimony to the existence and continuity of a sacred tradition in dancing and music that has been present throughout the development of popular music in the Afro-Cuban style," UC Irvine professor Raul Fernandez said in his 2006 book "From Afro-Cuban Rhythms to Latin Jazz."

Graciela Perez Grillo, an Afro-Cuban music pioneer who was known as the First Lady of Latin Jazz, has died. She was 94. Graciela, as she was known professionally, died April 6 of natural causes at the Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York, where she had been hospitalized for some time, according to her representative, Richie Viera. "She was almost the last of those great musicians who came here from Cuba in the 1940s and early 1950s," WSKQ-FM (97.9) radio host Polito Vega told the New York Daily News.