Roberto Fonseca

We first met him as the pianist in Buena Vista Social Club, when his mentor was the great Ibrahim Ferrer, and though he can point to solid professional career going back over fifteen years, it is only recently, since the release of his debut album Zamazu, that Fonseca has been recognised as one of the finest instrumentalists ever to come out of Cuba, as well as a composer and arranger with his own clear, individual style, precise and emotive. Roberto Fonseca makes intimate, personal music dominated by a sound that he himself describes as “cubafricanjazz”. Others, unsurprisingly perhaps, have referred to this sound as “the new Cuban magic”…