Description
Mambo Loco is a love letter to the popular music of Havana: the rhythms, melodies, and harmonies that spilled out of Cuba in the 1930s and never quite stopped travelling. Christian Lauba approaches this material the way Bizet or Ravel approached Spain: as an outsider who is not pretending otherwise, amplifying what he hears through his own musical personality rather than attempting a faithful reproduction. The result is something that feels simultaneously rooted and entirely his own.
Beneath the mambo's irresistible surface, the piece makes considerable technical demands: slap tonguing, circular breathing, and multiphonics all weave through the interplay between the two instruments, adding layers that the original dance music never imagined. Mambo Loco was written for (and dedicated to) Marijke Schröer and David Cristóbal Litago.
