Cry Me A River, the New Release from Award-Winning
Hilario Duran and His Latin Jazz Big Band,
Out on Alma/Universal on September 8, 2023
The Celebrated Cuban-Canadian Composer and Piano-Master Hilario Durán Leads His 19-piece Ensemble Featuring Special Guests Paquito D’Rivera, Horacio “El Negro” Hernandez, and OKAN in a Stellar Big Band Recording – His First in 17 Years
“Hilario Durán brings the full scope of his artistry, the depth of knowledge of musical genres in the perfect storm of big artistry on Cry Me A River. The nine works on this recording are born of Durán’s Afro-Caribbean cultural topography but are also informed by his gifts for bending tradition and infusing his arrangements with unfettered improvisation.
Through the course of the album the Grammy-nominated and Juno Award-winning Durán actively throws overboard melodic, harmonic, and structural hooks that have become expressively blunted through overuse, building big band charts that bloom in color and texture and atmospheric beauty.
“I have waited almost twenty years to record another big band album,” Durán says. “But there was plenty of preparation for this moment.” He refers to the four radio broadcasts of his compositions and arrangements with the great WDR Big Band in Koln, Germany. “It was great to showcase my music and to ‘workshop’ some new arrangements… aspects of the craft I learned working with the Orquesta Cubana de Música Moderna in Habana which I inherited from Chucho Valdés… So much to be grateful for the gift of music… it seemed that the time is right for this new album, Cry Me A River,” Durán muses…”
