Nueva Manteca

Led by Dutch pianist Jan Laurenz Hartong (b. c.1941), the eight-piece Netherlands ensemble Nueva Manteca delivers an intensely faithful rendering of Latin music while incorporating elements drawn from Arabic, classical, Dutch Antillean and salsa traditions. Speaking to journalists in 1996, Hartong observed, ‘It’s the same situation as hearing a Korean violinist playing a Beethoven concerto. It’s already accepted in the jazz world. In the whole world music development, a lot of people are digging into all kinds of cultures.’

Hartong took up dixieland piano at twelve, moved into bebop by fifteen and began working professionally that same year. In 1966 he appeared with Jan Hammer and Joachim Kühn at an international jazz festival adjudicated by Cannonball and Nat Adderley, earning a medal for his performance.

Drawn to Latin music from childhood, Hartong assembled a ten-piece salsa unit in Rotterdam in 1983. Two subsequent trips to Cuba, in 1984 and 1987, prompted him to adopt a Latin-jazz approach and rename the group from Manteca to Nueva Manteca. During the ensemble’s first three years it benefited from the presence of esteemed New York timbales specialist Nicky Marrero. The band established its concert profile through European festival appearances and, under the state-supported banner Nueva Manteca Meets The Legends, shared stages with guest artists Giovanni Hidalgo, Juanito Torres, Orestes Vilató, Armando Peraza and Bobby Sanabria. A 1995 United States tour preceded the album Let’s Face The Music And Dance, which was dedicated to the late New York professor Vernon Boggs, an advocate for salsa in Scandinavia, and presented Latin-inflected interpretations of Duke Ellington’s “Caravan,” Miles Davis’s “All Blues” and an Irving Berlin medley. Earlier recordings included Porgy & Bess, a Latin-rhythm adaptation of the George Gershwin opera.