News

Hello friends, I am very happy to share some incredible news. I just heard that my latest CD “Today’s Opinion” won the Cuban Jazz Award at “Feria Internacional Cubadisco 2013″ in Havana, Cuba, where both my parents went to received the prize. I also want to congratulate all my friends that have been nominated in other categories: Yunior Terry, Roman Filiu, Gema Corredera, Manuel Valera, Carlos Cano, Ailem Carbajal and the list goes on and on.

Hola amigos, me siento muy emocionado al compartir estas gratas noticias. Mi último disco “Today’s Opinion” ganó el premio de Jazz Cubano en la “Feria Internacional Cubadisco 2013″ en la Habana, Cuba. Mis felicitaciones tambien grandes amigos y talentos que fueron nominados en otras categorias: Yunior Terry, Gema Corredera, Manuel Valera, Ailem Carbajal, Carlos Cano entre otros. Felicidades a todos, se que han estado trabajando muy intensamente. Yosvany Terry
Photo by Grovert Driesser

DownBeat
July 2006

Yosvany Terry Cabrera
Metamorphosis
KINDRED RHYTHM 1117
3 1/2 Stars,
Saxophonist Yosvany Teny Cabrera has made himself an integral part of New York’s new Latin jazz scene since moving to the city from his native Cuba in 1999. Before leaving the island he played with Cubanismo, pianist Chucho Valdes and songwriter Silvio
Rodriguez. After arriving in the States he’s worked with the likes of Steve Coleman, Roy Hargrove and Eddie Palmieri. On his debut album, Cabrera proves that he’s listened carefully to his employers, crafting a diverse, sure-handed record that, as the title suggests, synthesizes a wide array of ingredients into a single, convincing vision. From track to track the album provides a nice cross-section of the scene’s multifarious concerns; dense matrixes of cross-cutting rhythms, virtuosic velocity and a bracing reinvention of classic Afro-Cuban tropes (dig the Dizzy Gillespie “Manteca” quote in “EI Burlon”). With the astonishing technical dexterity of fellow
Latinos like drummer Dafnis Prieto, pianist Luis Perdomo and his brother, bassist Yunior Teny
Cabrera, there are some unfortunate doses of post-fusion busyness and flashy unison flights. But more often than not Cabrera uses the bubbling polyrhythms to fuel potent improvisation. Oddly, the leader sometimes disappears into
group sound, with the agile trumpeter Avishai Cohen coming across as the most dominant participant. But Cabrera definitely succeeds as an
arranger, covering a wide stylistic scope. Percussionist Pedro Martinez adds some hypnotic Santeria chanting to the post-Miles Davis
modality of “Journey Of Awareness,” while ‘This Is It” shows that the saxophonist can tackle funky post-bop with as much fluency as he
does Latin-driven grooves. -Peter Margasak

Metamorphosis: Okonkolo Concertante;
EI Burlon (The Joker);
Journey of Awareness;
This Is It;
The Crying;
Subversive;
Transito A Full [Traffic Jam);
Rampa Abajo
(61 :55)

Personnel:
YosvanyTerry Cabrera. saxophones;
Avishai Cohen. trumpet;
Mike Moreno. guitar;
Luis Perdomo, piano;
Hans Glawishnig, James Genus, Yunior Terry Cabrera, bass;
Pedro Martinez, percussion;
Dalnis Prieto, Jeff “Tain” Walts, drums.

ED Ordering info: kindredrhythm.com
DownBeat
July 2006

Downbeat
February 2007

Yosvany Terry Cabrera ~ New School Cuban

New York is an incredible learning experience,”said saxophonist Yosvany Terry Cabrera. “Every band, session or musical project that you participate in has people from all over the world, bringing new information and knowledge on what they do.” A native of Cuba’s Camaguay province and a Habanero through the 1990s, Terry, 35 and a Harlem resident since 1999, is a long established first-caller in the jazz capital. He’s served with such conceptualists as Steve Coleman, Dave Douglas and Brian Lynch, as well as pan-diasporic postboppers like Jeff Watts, Jason Lindner, bassist Avishai Cohen, trUmpeter Avishai Cohen and Manuel Valera. He’s worked for Latin music envelope-pushers
such as Eddie Palmieri and Dafnis Prieto and Afro-Cuban purists like Jane Bunnett. All value Terry’s immaculate musicianship, his rare ability to blend in when executing the idiomatic nuances of the function in question while also stamping his creative, recognizable voice within the flow. A document of Terry’s due diligence is the recording Metamorphosis (Kindred Rhythm)
issued last year. Terry arranged seven of his own originals and one by his brother Yunior for quintet, sextet and septet configurations. Playing primarily alto saxophone, Terry uncorks an array of fresh ideas, phrasing them in a Charlie Parker-through-Steve Coleman
manner and projecting them with a tenoristic tone that reflects the Gary Bartz-Kenny Garrett school of alto expression. “All the different gigs you play in town put you on the spot, and you end up growing,” Terry said. “I like to be a sideman as much as playing my music; the different accents and demands put you into corners you wouldn’t get to otherwise.” Terry referred to his father, violinist chekere
player Don Eladio Teny, who has led Maravillas de Florida, a popular charanga unit, since the 1950s. He trained him and his brothers-
flutist Yoel and bassist Yunior-in the African codes that inform Cuban folkloric and popular music and in Euro-classic strains. Yosvany took up the saxophone al 10, and caught the jazz bug in his early tecns. After graduating from the Escuela Nacional de Arte conservatory in Havana, Terry linked up with a clique of contemporaries for whom jazz was not an officially prohibited experience, as it had been for prior-generation Cuban jazz musicians. At the Stanford Jazz Workshop in 1995, Terry began a relationship with Coleman, which solidified the following year when Coleman spent quality time in Cuba to prepare and document The Sign And The Seal. “Steve knows the tradition so well, and he noticed that we were lacking some of this stuff,” Terry said. “He’d bring us recordings by Bird and Sonny Rollins, and break them down for us so we could understand them. “I feel fortunate to have grown up in Cuba,” Terry continued. “The rhythmic concept
is so sophisticated and elaborate, but it’s the folklore that you hear in the ceremony or from people sitting down on the comer. But I
want to be part of something bigger. That’s what you learn from all the great composers, even in classical music, like Bartok and
Stravinsky, who came here after living in different countries. Cubans have been doing this for a long time. It keeps the music fresh in
content, to take tradition and fabricate something
new.”
-Ted Panken

Jazziz June 2006

Yosvany Terry Cabrera

Metamorphosis

(Kindred Rhythm)

Playing tango, timba, and other Latin stylesrequires a high level of musicianship as well as an innate association with the genre. When Latin musicians step away from those traditions and let their creativity flow, anything can happen. Cuban saxophonist Terry Cabrera and a cadre oflikeminded young instrumentalists prove the point on this heady excursion into Latin-tinged out-leaning playing that’s packed with eruptions of gleeful blowing. Latin accented avant-garde has been around since the ’70S, when Panamanian reedman Carlos Garnett foreshadowed the emergence of a new generation of musicians more in tune with ‘Trane and Ornette than the bebop that lit fires for artists like Arturo Sandoval and Paquito D’Rivera. Terry Cabrera is a member of Los Terry, a family that’s legendary in Cuban music circles for its melding of folkloric and modern elements. On Metamorphosis, one of the clan’s most gifted sons pairs his octave-jumping alto sax against Avishai Cohen’s equally liberated trumpet to create some of the session’s most electric moments. Another feature of Terry Cabrera’s concept is using Afro-Cuban percussive elements more selectively and placing them a bit more to the background. He opts instead for the driving force of traditional jazz trap drums, featuring both Dafnis Prieto and Jeff ”Tain” Watts. While pianist Luis Perdomo gets a nice turn on “The Crying,” a moody ballad uncharacteristic of most tracks, it’s electric guitarist Mike Moreno’s splashes of fat chords and hyper comping that most define the session’s rhythmic current.

- Mark Holston