Our current Spotlight Artist Samuel Quinto brings an enormous amount of musicality, technical virtuosity, and applied creativity into his performance on the trio recording Salsa’ N Jazz. The pianist infuses each piece with a soulful joy that resonates through the music, bringing a passionate edge to his unique blend of jazz, Afro-Cuban music, and Brazilian rhythms. He integrates an influence from some of the most respected jazz and Latin pianists, including Michel Camilo and Chick Corea, but without a doubt, his performance explodes with a distinct personality that bursts through each track. As a composer, he delivers pieces that play upon the exciting momentum of Latin rhythms, but also explore the inherent beauty of flowing melodies and rich harmonies. Bassist Marcos Borges and drummer Manuel Santiesteban offer firm support throughout the album, displaying a strong command over the different styles that Quinto investigates and an informed ability to navigate diverse harmonic territory. Quinto applies his musicians’ skills wisely, integrating them closely into his arrangements. There’s a wise balance between composed band parts and open improvisatory material that maintains a cohesive sound while allowing space for spontaneity. These three musicians take the trio format and push it into a demanding style of Latin Jazz, turning the sound of three people into a massive wave of propulsive energy. Quinto and his trio provide a lot of reasons to hear Salsa’ N Jazz, making a compelling musical argument that can’t be missed.

If you want to get a better feel for Quinto’s music, there’s plenty of places online that you can find him. Quinto’s website offers a look at both of Quinto’s albums, some great video clips and pictures, as well as background information and a current schedule. You can befriend Quinto and check out samples from Salsa’ N Jazz over at his MySpace page. His YouTube page has a wealth of videos, featuring him performing in a variety of contexts; he also keeps it regularly updated, so you can check back often. Stay updated on all the latest news and events through Quinto’s Facebook page, and don’t forget to take the time and become a fan. Bassist Marcos Borges can be found on his MySpace page, letting you find out a little bit more about the man behind the low end. Drummer Manuel Santiesteban also resides on MySpace, check out his work with Quinto and beyond HERE. Take a few minutes to travel around the internet, and you’ll find plenty of options to become familiar with this fantastic musician.

Still looking for more Quinto? Don’t worry; we’ve got you covered. Quinto has kindly offered to share not one, but two tracks with LJC readers. Starting this morning, the songs “Salsa’ N Jazz” and “Quinto’s Rhumba” have found a new home at the LJC Listening Center. Head over there now and download MP3s of both complete tracks, add them to your iPod and you’re ready to go. Don’t wait; download these tracks now at the LJC Listening Center. Once you hear these tracks, you’re going to be hooked; once you’re ready for more take the dive, support Quinto, and pick up a copy of Salsa’ N Jazz - you’ll be glad that you did!

I’ve included a write-up on Quinto from Frank Eichardt below that includes some biographical information, giving you yet another chance to become familiar with Quinto. Enjoy!

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Samuel Quinto is an exceptional piano player; his virtuoso, often percussive playing, often with a continuous “tumbao,” accompanying the other solos as well as his own, is intoxicating. His compositions, influenced among others by Michel Camilo, Chick Corea and Gonzalo Rubalcaba, are original melodies that can have - different colorings, depending on the ethnic or geographic origin of theme, dance or title.

Hard to believe that Samuel Quinto is self-taught - his prodigy tale goes like this:

Quinto was born in Belem/Pará, North-Brazil, and raised in Salvador da Bahía. Various good piano players accompanied the gospel singing in the Baptist church “Igreja Batista Sinai”, which his family regularly visited, and the seven year old boy was fascinated by them. He wanted to learn to play everything that they could play, and he wanted to become a better piano player than the best of them. All alone, only by ear, he taught himself everything. In his parents’ house there was a piano. His parents encouraged him, let him do as he liked. Piano classes were hard to finance, and he anyway didn’t want to practice scales and the classical canon. Rather, he learned by himself to play what he liked to play, learned to read and write music, and to make arrangements for music groups and choirs in the church. At the age of 12 he began playing the piano during services, in “his” church, in front of 1000 members of the congregation.

After a few terms at university, he gave up his studies of civil engineering and finally - aged 25 - decided to focus on one thing only: music! He earned his livelihood as piano-player in the bar of Hotel Marriott in Costa do Sauipe, a holiday resort near Salvador. He was bored by many forms of piano music and always wanted to play more complex things. One day he discovered Michel Camilo, the master pianist and composer in classical music and jazz; finally Quinto found his ideal of Latin Jazz.

In 2008 Samuel Quinto taught Latin jazz piano in a master class at the conservatory of the Catholic University in Salvador da Bahía, and in another master class at “Escola Jazz Ao Norte” in Porto, and has since given several solo concerts in Portugal. The first Samuel Quinto Trio CD, “Latin Jazz Thrill,” was released 2007 in Portugal and has provided the core of the repertoire during numerous concerts and festivals in 2007 and 2008 in various towns in Portugal and during the tour of 2008 with appearances in Hamburg, Berlin, Köln and Heilbronn as well as in Liège and Limoges. Samuel Quinto’s 2nd CD, “Salsa ‘n Jazz” was released officially on June 6th, 2009 and was presented in a concert in Porto. On bass was a classically trained contra bass player, Marcos Borges, also from Brasil, and on drums was Manuel Santiesteban from Cuba, who studied drums in Havana. The CD features eight compositions by Samuel Quinto and one standard, variable tone colors despite pure piano trio instrumentation, and an intoxicating joy of playing. Regular repetition of themes and precise playing in harmony may create the impression, on first hearing, that everything is through-composed, though actually its 50 % improvisation.

The track list describes the pieces as the courses of a festive dinner (contributed by Rui Vital, also a musician coming from Brasil and a friend of Samuel Quinto), and it gets things fairly close:

The starter - “Quinto’s Rhumba” - in the style of the jazz-rock-latin fusion experiments of the sixties, a lot of fun and an homage to Herbie Hancock, whets your appetite for more Latin rhythms. The main course is seven more compositions by Samuel Quinto, themes with a Brazilian and/or Cuban touch and rhythm, among them two romantic ballads, dedicated to Samuel Quinto’s wife and to his mother. As dessert, a beautiful version of “Stella By Starlight, which after a short introduction of the theme turns into improvisations over salsa rhythms.

I talked to Samuel Quinto after his trio’s concert in Hamburg 2008, and we had been corresponding since then. Finally he invited my wife and me to the concert in Porto, and again, “live” it was even better than on CD. The location, the concert hall of the private jazz school “Escola Jazz Ao Norte” in Porto, which breathes in the great music enthusiasm of its founder, owner and director, engineer Pedro Ferreira. The school provides music lessons on various instruments, workshops, music-therapy and concerts. Whenever all his administration and finance work leaves him the time, he takes saxophone lessons in his own school. All the well-tempered and excited friends, the helpers, and the three musicians of the Samuel Quinto Trio, appeared in elegant black suites before the almost 100 guests. All shared a great passion for music, for Latin jazz, personified by Samuel Quinto that night in Porto at the grand piano.

Meanwhile, a couple of things have become clear to me: Latin Jazz isn’t principally different from North American jazz, but an extension of its possibilities by the multiple rhythms of Latin American music, a process of exchange and mutual influence, continuing since the 1940s. And Samuel Quinto is on the way to becoming one of the great ones among the piano players in this genre.

Frank Eichardt
June 22, 2009
Hamburg - Germany

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Check Out These Related Posts:
Spotlight: Dia Real, Tanaora
Spotlight: Para Los Engreidos, Manante
Spotlight: Punto De Vista (Viewpoint), Frank Villafañe
Spotlight: Latin Journey, Kraft, Landry, & Messina

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