Artist: Candido Camero
Album: The Master
Genre: Jazz
Release Date: 2014
Audio Format:: FLAC (tracks) 24 bit, 192 kHz
Duration: 51:03
Total Tracks: 8
Total Size: 1,89 GB

Tracklist:

01. Candido Camero – Arcason (06:25)
02. Candido Camero – Riffiando (06:29)
03. Candido Camero – Salsibiri (07:47)
04. Candido Camero – Lagrimas Negras (03:53)
05. Candido Camero – Wow Wow Holy Cow (07:53)
06. Candido Camero – Conga Descarga (05:34)
07. Candido Camero – Conga Blues (07:06)
08. Candido Camero – Mulatacha (05:56)

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Candido Camero was born on April 22nd, 1921 in Barrio Cerro, Havana, Cuba. Candido has become an important star in the jazz world, as well as the Afro Cuban genre, performing and recording with Machito’s Afro Cubans, Billie Holiday, Billy Taylor, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington, Stan Kenton and recently with Tony Bennett. The list goes on and on. He has transformed the conga drum into an international instrument used in all genres of music.The legendary conga player, now at the age of 92, is still making heads turn and bodies move with a masterful command of his instruments. Candido, by way of his spectacular showmanship and rapport with audiences and his unique style of tuning his three conga drums, has transformed the conga drum into an international instrument spanning all genres of music. Candido has become an important star in the jazz world as well as the Afro Cuban scene, performing and recording with Machito’s Afro Cubans, Billie Holiday, Dizzy Gillespie, Billy Taylor, Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington, Stan Kenton, and most recently with Tony Bennett. And the list goes on and on. His instrumental prowess is well known and acclaimed; in 2008 he was the recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts’ Jazz Masters Award. Part of the Chesky Binaural + Series, all recorded with a single microphone, the band appears right before you with this spacious, lush and multi-dimensional recording. Now headphone users will hear the same three-dimensional sound and imaging as audiophiles have for the past 25 years with Chesky Recordings. These new Binaural+ Series albums capture even more spatial realism for the home audiophile market, bringing you one step closer to the actual event. You will hear some of the most natural and pure conga drums ever recorded.

The term “legend” is best reserved for dead people: Buddy Bolden, Charlie Parker, Charles Mingus; and directly from Cuba: Arsenio Rodríguez, Tata Güines, Frank Emilio Flynn… but somehow it seems wholly appropriate to bestow that honoris causa on a small handful of living persons. The great conguero, Candido Camero is one of them. He is a legend not entirely from the manner in which he plays the congas, but what he exudes as a musician: the quintessence—that elemental, fundamentally phantom quality that even few men—even fewer musicians—have. However, it so happens that the 90-plus Candido is, in fact, a musician; a conguero like no other. His attack is angular; almost too soft and caressing. His large hands and long fingers might, on another musician, be forbidding, but on Candido’s they are almost loving; the kind that wrap themselves gently and protectively around an object rather than seize it. This gives him a special sound; one that is soft and virtually whisper-like. As a result the sound that emanates from his set of drums seems to sound like the profound rumbling of the earth as it wakes up from its slumber each time the seasons change, for instance. The Master is a magnificently produced recording by one of the finest practitioners of audiophile techniques, Chesky Records. The label has set up a new imprint, Binaural Series that incorporates a 3D-sound. All of this would have been adequate to capture Candido’s sound if he indeed existed in the known realm of three dimensions. But Candido adds a spectral, fourth-dimensional quality to his ineffable performances every time he gets his hands on the skins of the drums. His rhythmic angularity is informed by notes that bob and weave; rise and fall like melodies that soar into the emerald beyond. In ensemble passages Candido sounds as if he were playing/uttering almost human sounds complete with voice-like inflections with musical diphthongs that glimmer as they glide off the conga heads. In his soli Candido does all of this and more. He dazzles with his wizardry; he mesmerizes with his cross-talk and the vaunted melodic lines; the rhythmic gymnastics that featured arpeggios, staccatos and ritardandos; slurred notes and virtual crescendos that always transformed the literature of the music he played. This novel style of playing is the focus of charts as far removed in as the great Ray Santos piece “Conga Descarga” is from the classic “Lágrimas Negras”. This music seems to have been composed almost exclusively for the generous musical spirit that is Candido, who continues to record as well as travel and perform with the energy that belies his 93 years of age. But in his extraordinary youthfulness is the wisdom of the ancients that seems to flow through Candido’s hands and fingers onto his beloved congas. Magnitudine sua in aeternum agnosceretur… –Latin Jazz Network