Cuban Jazz with Carlos Gomez, Jeff Fuller and Ben Bilello

Carlos Manuel Gomez, piano
Jeff Fuller, bass
Ben Bilello, drums

Carlos Manuel Gomez was born in Havana, Cuba, in 1974 and has lived in New Haven for the past 5 years. He spends part of his time playing both classical piano and Latin jazz piano, and the rest of his time as a labor organizer and lobbyist on behalf of Uber and Lyft drivers, nationally overlooked by organized labor.

Carlos: “I began to study piano at about six years old. I was in a musical school named after one of the great Cuban composers and professors of piano. By the age of 15, I was at the highest level and so I had the best professors. My professors were the great Cuban jazz musicians Chucho Valdés, Gonzalo Rubacalba, Paquito D’Rivera, and Arturo Sandoval. All of them were music professors. The greatest bandleaders were all our professors. Between the 1970s and the 1990s, there was a huge movement for jazz, those were the twenty sacred years. The great [Cuban singer] Pablo Milanes opened a foundation in 1988, and he helped me get to Colombia. Eventually I made my way to Mexico, then Miami, and now I’m here in New Haven. [At Best Video] we will present son Cubano, boleros, montunos, mambos, in the format of Latin Jazz. Everybody loves Cuban music, but people don’t know where to find it.” — excerpt from interview by James Bhandary-Alexander, The Arts Paper, New Haven, August 23, 2024.

Bassist Jeff Fuller and drummer Ben Bilello, though native to New England, have had much experience playing Cuban music and Latin jazz. Jeff was bassist for Paquito D’Rivera, Orlando “Puntilla” Rios and Hilton Ruiz, and composer/arranger for the salsa group Irazú, whose recordings—and Jeff’s arrangements—featured soloists Arturo Sandoval and Tata Güines. Ben has toured with the South American folk groups Viva Quetzal and Markamusic, and has performed with the Charles Flores Quintet, the Curtis Brothers (Zaccai, Damian and Luques), Steve Davis, Eddie Henderson, Branford Marsalis, Curtis Fuller, Javon Jackson, Anthony Braxton, Jimmy Greene, Wayne Escoffery, and Shelton “Fatman” Laster, among many others. Ben teaches at Central CT State University and Choate-Rosemary Hall.