Chucho Valdés and His Royal Quartet Close a Triumphant SFJAZZ Residency
At 85, the Cuban piano giant turned Miner Auditorium into a journey through Mozart, Ravel, and Shorter — and it all came out as pure Chucho.
Chucho Valdés and His Royal Quartet at Miner Auditorium. Photo: Steve Roby
Sunday night at Miner Auditorium marked the fourth and final night of a residency four months in the making. Chucho Valdés and his Royal Quartet were originally booked for late February 2026, then rescheduled to June — and by the time the maestro finally took his seat at the Steinway, the anticipation in the room had the particular charge of something long awaited.
This was the SFJAZZ premiere of the Royal Quartet project, the ensemble Valdés launched in September 2024 to celebrate sixty years of recording. At 85 — NEA Jazz Master, seven-time Grammy winner, and part of a lineage stretching from his father, Bebo, back to Ernesto Lecuona — he arrived as a working pianist with something still to prove, still hungry, still in the room to enthrall.
Sunday's set unfolded as a guided tour through everything the program promised. “Armando's Rhumba” arrived early, with Valdés's tribute to Chick Corea carrying the weight of their decades-long friendship and their 2019 two-piano summit at Jazz at Lincoln Center. “My Foolish Heart” slowed the room to a hush — slow enough that, two floors up, a couple on the balcony rose from their seats and danced romantically. Ravel's “Pavane” drifted through with its classical restraint intact, at least until its final stretch, which became something else entirely. Then “Footprints” pulled the band back into harder modern-jazz territory, Wayne Shorter's tune handled with the same fluency Valdés brought to his own “Chucho's Steps” — a title that nods to Coltrane even as the music underneath is pure Valdés.
Horacio “El Negro” Hernández and Roberto Jr. Vizcaino. Photo: Steve Roby
Something else came toward the end of “Pavane,” when Valdés turned the bandstand into a call-and-response game, tossing off a short improvised phrase and pointing to one player at a time, daring each to echo it back on the spot. It was a perfect window into a band built on a rhythmic foundation that borders on telepathy. Drummer Horacio “El Negro” Hernández and percussionist Roberto Jr. Vizcaíno spent the evening finishing each other's rhythmic sentences, the kind that unspool and lock back together before you've even registered what just happened.
Vizcaíno commanded an arsenal spread across his station: five congas of varying tones arrayed before him, a pair of bongos perched just inches above the congas, a floor tom to his far right, and a string of chimes and shakers within reach on the left. When the drum kit itself wasn't enough, Hernández stepped behind it and turned the venue's grooved wood panel walls into an instrument, running his sticks along the surface to conjure new textures. After one particularly fierce percussion duel, the two men rose from their stations, approached each other, and staged a mock sword fight with their respective sticks — a mutual acknowledgment, in the only language that made sense, of what they'd just pulled off together.
José Armando Gola. Photo: Steve Roby
Bassist José Armando Gola moved fluidly between upright and six-string electric, and when he settled into the latter, the ghost of Jaco Pastorius was never far from the room. All three sidemen kept one eye on Valdés throughout — he was the quiet center of gravity, the one whose glance signaled when a solo had run its course. He rarely addressed the crowd, and when he did, it was brief and mostly in Spanish, offering a word or two to introduce his bandmates.
At the Steinway, his massive hands and long fingers never missed a note. Occasionally, he'd glance at a handwritten setlist propped before him, and at one point he reached into a folder and pulled out a sheet of hand-scored music — a reminder that even at 85, after six decades of performing, Chucho Valdés still came to work prepared.
Chucho Valdés. Photo: Steve Roby
By the encore, the evening's through-line came into focus. “Mozart a la Cubana” wove the slow movement of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 23 into mambo and son rhythms, then made room for a quick, unmistakable quote from “Do-Re-Mi” — The Sound of Music surfacing for a few bars before dissolving back into Havana — and a wink to Herbie Hancock's “Watermelon Man,” folded in for good measure. Debussy, Monk, Evans, and Miles’s fingerprints were all over the way Valdés moved through the night.
Program Notes
Artist: Chucho Valdés Royal Quartet
Date: Sunday, June 14, 2026
Showtime: 7:00 p.m.
Venue: Miner Auditorium
Location: San Francisco, California
Personnel
Chucho Valdés, piano
José Armando Gola, electric and acoustic bass
Horacio “El Negro” Hernández, drums
Roberto Jr. Vizcaino, percussion
Set List: “Congadanza,” “Punto Cubano,” “Armando's Rhumba,” “My Foolish Heart,” “Ponle la Clave,” “Son de Almendra,” “Chucho's Steps,” “Pavanne,” “Footprints,” “Abdel” Encore: “Mozart a la Cubana”
