Pianist Manuel Valera was born and raised in Cuba and eventually went to college in Florida and New York City. Valera is steeped in Latin jazz and that’s partly where he made his name, leading the New Cuban Express, but he can also be found warmly improvising on standards by Miles Davis and John Coltrane.
Valera has a confidence and dexterity to navigate complex harmonic terrain with speed and subtlety. Valera has also recently drawn inspiration from popular pieces of classical music. He’s written and recorded music based, conceptually at least, on Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, and now Valera and his trio are performing “The Planets,” which is based partly on the Gustav Holst composition by that name, but also on the solar system and mythology as well.
Valera first studied saxophone, like his father, a famous Cuban sax player, then moved on to piano. Valera’s playing focuses on melodicism. But in his compositional efforts he’s become interested in 12-tone theory and in numerical permutations of scalar patterns. The music is rarely thorny though, with its technical difficulties artfully concealed behind a flow and control.
The Manuel Valera Trio plays The Side Door, 85 Lyme St., Old Lyme, on Friday, Jan. 5, at 8:30 p.m. Tickets are $35. 860-434-0886 or thesidedoorjazz.com.
