Cuban Flute Style is thus a contextualised, analytical study, arising from a combination of Miller’s lessons from Egües, her research in Havana and New York, her subsequent experiences as a charanga bandleader, and the completion of a Leeds University PhD undertaken to study the processes involved in learning the charanga style of improvisation.
Let me begin by saying that Sue Miller’s Cuban Flute Style is an extraordinarily comprehensive oeuvre, with respect to both the history and the technique of charanga flute playing. In addition, her book is realized with a broad as well as a thoughtful understanding of the entire tradition on which this style of music is based.
book launch for Cuban Flute Style@
LATIN AMERICAN MUSIC SEMINAR
Saturday 10th May 2014
Room G22-26 (Ground Floor)
Senate House, Malet Street
London WC1E 2HU
A morning of presentations finishing with:
3.00pm Sue Miller (Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge), BOOK LAUNCH: Cuban Flute Style: Interpretation and Improvisation (Scarecrow Press 2013).
3.45pm Tea followed by live music performed by Charanga del Norte (Cuban charanga music which forms the focus of Sue Miller’s book).
My book Cuban Flute Style: Interpretation and Improvisation is now available from all good book stores!
I’m giving talks on Cuban music in London (2nd) and Cambridge (27th) this November – both are free and open to the public. The first on clave and improvisation is for LAMS (Latin American Music Seminars) at Senate House, London and the second is on the role of influence in the development of the Cuban flute style is at the University of Cambridge music department, West Road.
I’m presenting a paper on clave feel in Latin improvisation at this conference.The conference will take place 2-4 July, 2013 and will include three distinguished keynote speakers:
Anne Danielsen (University of Oslo)
Walter Everett (University of Michigan)
Allan Moore (University of Surrey).
Charanga del Norte will be gigging again from 2014. Bookings for next year are now being taken (see contact details for enquiries).
Check out El Ruso’s piano solo on this performance of Almendra by Charanga de Oro in Santa Cruz del Norte, Cuba
I’m in the US at the Society for Ethnomusicology (SEM) Conference in Philadelphia and presenting my work on a panel led by Professor Robin Moore so do contact me if you’re there….
This is someone who knows her stuff and loves nothing more than a good descarga (jam session). She feels Cuban music in her blood, and the band behind her does some sterling work. That she’s the star is beyond doubt, and her freewheeling, spiralling improvisations are joyful to hear. Bonus points for coming from Leeds and the delightful wordplay in the title, but the meat is in the performance, which is as tasty as they come – within Cuba or outside.