Charlie Haden and
Gonzalo Rubalcaba
Tokyo Adagio

When the Shenandoah-born bassist Charlie Haden was in Cuba with the Liberation Music Orchestra in 1986, performing at the Havana Jazz Festival, he found himself playing at the same concert as a young, classically trained Havana-born pianist called Gonzalo Rubalcaba, who had just returned from touring the Soviet Union.

Haden introduced himself to the young prodigy, and they began a friendship which lasted until the great bassist’s death in July 2014. The US ban on Cuban musicians meant that any performances on recordings with Rubalcaba had to be made outside the US frontiers, and Hayden overcame this obstacle by inviting the Cuban to 1989 Montreal Jazz Festival as his guest, and in 1990 he recorded his first studio album outside Cuba, Discovery, in Montreal for Blue Note Records, followed by The Blessing in 1991 with Hayden and the drummer Paul Motian.