http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/22/arts/music/cuban-music-and-more-at-jazz-at-lincoln-center.html 2014-12-22 00:08:35 Cuban Music and More at Jazz at Lincoln Center The “New Jazz Frontiers” concert combined a tricky instrumentation and various musical languages, and featured Orlando Valle, a Cuban flutist rarely heard in New York. === One possible result of a normalized relationship between the United States and Cuba: greater ease in the creation of concerts like “New Jazz Frontiers,” an experiment and a success presented on Friday and Saturday nights at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Appel Room. Which is not to say that the rigorous 90-minute set was all Cuban music, or a singularly Cubanized version of jazz. There was a small group combining various musical languages, which has always happened under the banner of jazz, although this group did more combining than most, including elements of Andalusian flamenco, Venezuelan joropo, Cuban son and American jazz. It had a tricky instrumentation to do that with: flute, harp, piano, bass and drums. And it included a great Cuban musician not often heard in New York, the flutist Let’s start with what it was not. Friday’s concert didn’t turn into a jam session, and it didn’t become merely a showcase for the two front-line soloists, Mr. Valle — So what was it? It was a group organized by Jazz at Lincoln Center, planned well in advance but realized at the last minute, with two days’ rehearsal. Each of the five members contributed original compositions: Mr. Valle and Mr. Castaneda, as well as the New York-based Venezuelan pianist There was a taut balance in the dimensions of the music — surprisingly so, given the short rehearsal time and the multiple changes of form and rhythm in every piece. The harp and flute solos were offset by Mr. Simon’s elegant, muted-dynamics playing; he made you feel his harmonic choices and his rhythmic emphasis while rarely raising his hands off the keys. Mr. Curtis has a resonant, intense sound, and Mr. Freedman has a clear and specific one, but they made their approaches mesh. What’s more, all the players had clearly thought about how to combine the musical languages they understood best. One example of many: a piece by Mr. Castaneda, “Colibri,” combined the bulería rhythm from flamenco with joropo, the folkloric style that often includes harp; it used common time signatures to bind them together. That looks clever on paper, but none of the music sounded contrived. Plenty of music from around the world is related; this group found the nodes of those relations, the rhythms or scales or repetitions, and stuck to what was most powerful and meaningful within them.