Friday, 04 November 2011 17:39
Riverside Orchestra playing at Salón Cetro A of Hotel Meliá Cohiba. Photo by L.Calvo.
A very nice surprise: The popular Riverside Orchestra has been reborn, a group founded in 1938 by the great and already disappeared musician and director Enrique González Mántici.
First the group was known as Havana Riverside, later it went just by the shorter Riverside and how real experts state it "has become the most applauded Cuban orchestra during the Forties and Fifties".
Reading the list of directors and musicians who have passed through the group, one understands where its high quality comes from: Adolfo Guzmán, Orlando López (Cachaíto), Pedro Jústiz (Peruchín), Manuel "Guajiro" Mirabal and Tito Gómez, to mention only the most important ones. The fabulous singer Tito Gómez who joined Riverside in 1942, had a simple stage performance without much grandiloquence, though with his magnetic voice and his single timbre he had an unforgettable impact on the listener. His interpretation of the composer's Gonzalo Curiel song "Vereda Tropical" is internationally known and still listened to and has had enormous success although it had been recorded before by three giants of the genre: Toña la Negra, Juan Arvizu and Pedro Vargas.
Tito Gómez also has been considered one of the greatest Cuban improvisers, a quality which was accredited to him by two other great improvisers: Miguelito Valdés and Benny Moré.
Young graduates from different music schools and with lots of talent and especially passion can't wait to take over this beautiful orchestra tradition from the pioneers represented by the excellent current instrumentalist of the jazz band: Raúl Nacianceno. It's a big responsibility laying in their hands, so that the audience keeps dancing along the very distinct beat of the Riverside Orchestra and to introduce the group to the young and to let the not so young remember its magical music.
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