Alexis Bosch Mendez (Alexis Bosch) (b. June 18, 1966 - ) is a Cuban pianist, composer, arranger, percussionist, and band leader. Bosch fuses elements of American and Latin jazz with different trends of Cuban music and international pop and rock. He counts as major influences on his career performers and composers such as Bill Evans, Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock and Cuban artists Frank Emilio Flynn, Peter Jústiz Peruchín, and Felipe Dulzaides. He also listens to Van Van, Orquesta Aragon, the RO, the Original de Manzanillo, the experimental group out of Sonora called ICAIC, and pop music influences like Queen, Earth Wind & Fire, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Chicago, and Blood, Sweat & Tears.
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Biography[]
Bosch was born in Guanabacoa, an Eastern township of Havana, Cuba, on June 18, 1966. He began his musical studies as a percussionist at the William Thomas School. He studied piano as well, as his maternal grandmother was a piano teacher. In 1985 he graduated from the Amadeo Roldan Conservatory, Cuba's premiere academy of music.
Career[]
Bosch then moved to the city of Guantánamo where he became a percussionist, pianist and arranger in the Orquesta Ideal.
The group was led by Conrado Monier, a prominent leader and arranger of choral music in Cuba. The repertoire of the band was essentially Cuban dance music, so they played genres like changüí, bolero, etc. Bosch began as their drummer, then alternated seat time with fellow pianist and percussionist Nelson Betancourt.
Changüí music became a major influence. It combines the structure and elements of Spain's canción and the Spanish guitar with African rhythms and percussion instruments of Bantu origin. Changüí is considered a predecessor of son montuno (the ancestor of modern salsa), which has enjoyed tremendous popularity in Cuba throughout the 20th century. Bosch studied its most notable creators and performers like Peter Speck and Chito Latamblé, those usually heard at the Casa de la Trova in Guantanamo.
He joined a jazz quartet called Fusion 4, replacing Felipe Dulzaides. The group performed at a piano bar called "El Elegante" Hotel Riviera in Guantánamo. The job allowed him to explore other ways of making music and exploring jazz with a Real Book and more questions than answers.
It was from that time that he became a pianist, musical director, arranger and composer for different groups, and became a catalyst for their work. He performed with System, Glass and Cut (Sarabande). He studied Afro jazz with Martha Duarte and master Bobby Carcasses, who at that time appeared in clubs like Maxim Rock and Lucky's Bar and Ifa Group, under the direction of Papo Angarica. He performed in Diákara working as a sideman for Oscar Valdés.
Since then he has lead groups while playing the piano, performing and composing his own arrangements. At first, his groups' repertoire was composed mostly of jazz standards, but later Bosch began to perform his own works, which are heavily influenced by Chick Corea, Chuco Valdés, Irakere, and in particular Cuban Jazz and Afro-Cuban Jazz pianist Emiliano Salvador.
He returned to Havana in the summer of 1987, where he became a professor of percussion at the Alejandro García Caturla music school. He became a pianist for several groups, including Runway and the Sendas Quintet performing with masters Emiliano Salvador Valdés, Rodolfo Terry, Jose Feliciano Arango, band leader Carlos Acosta, and Barretico on drums . He did some of the arranging and composing for their album for Runway, although most of the writing was by José Carlos.
It was in Sendas where more Alexis Bosch experimented with his music, since almost all of the subjects were composed and arranged by him. It was a kind of laboratory for what is now his quintet.