Harold Lopez Nussa: ‘Nueva Timba’

As we head into autumn, there is nothing quite like the energy, rhythms and overall vibe of ‘Nueva Timba’, just released on Blue Note from Cuban pianist and composer Harold López-Nussa.

If you can get past the album artwork, which is a thing of beauty before needle meets vinyl, there’s a brief blink-and-you-missit opening track - Open. The electronics and a countdown over piano and vocals leads nicely into Bonito y Sabroso, brought right up to date since the original Benny Moré track of the 1950s. The exuberance of this ensemble is infectious from the opening bars.

Alongside Harold López-Nussa (piano), Ruy Adrian López-Nussa (drums), Luques Curtis (bass) and Grégoire Maret (harmonica). Yes, pianist and drummer and brothers, but this doesn’t feel like nepotism, it’s just players with styles and techniques that work brilliantly together.

But it is when López-Nussa launches into the extraordinary, brief and brilliant Gitarnerias that we hear the pianist’s virtuosity. The arrangement of Ernesto Lecuona’s composition that’s nearly a century old is two minutes of musical beauty.

Recorded at Paris’s iconic jazz club Le Duc des Lombards, Nueva Timba seems very French, alongside the Cuban background of López-Nussa himself. Listen to Why and you’re right there in the club.

For López-Nussa, this is a very personal album. He says: “Nueva Timba tells the very real story of a man displaced: a young father finding his way in a new country while missing his homeland with heartrending intensity; all the while, he’s nursing other emotional wounds including the passing of his mother, and the compounding torment brings him to a state of despair. Slowly but surely, sunshine begins to poke through the clouds, and he discovers a path forward. Something like happiness returns to the horizon. Consider Nueva Tima musical tears of joy.”