Colombian salsa star Fruko returns to Cambridge to perform with Classico Latino
Dynamic Cambridge-based musical collective Classico Latino – hailed as “a unique fusion of Latin and classical with beautiful musicality” by the UK Latin Awards – are bringing top Colombian musician Fruko back to the city for the second year in a row.
The salsa legend, whose real name is Julio Ernesto Estrada Rincón, appeared as a special guest of the popular ensemble at a performance in Cambridge – at the Queen’s Building Lecture Theatre, Emmanuel College – in April last year.
This time, the 73-year-old multi-instrumentalist, who is generally regarded as Colombia’s most famous salsa star, will be appearing on stage at Great St Mary’s Church next week, once again alongside his new-found friends.
Cambridge cellist Graham Walker, who is also director of music at Emmanuel College, formed Classico Latino in 1998 following a chance encounter on the Bridge of Sighs with a fellow University of Cambridge student.
“Classico Latino was a group that started in Cambridge back in the late 1990s, when Ivan Guevara, a Colombian pianist, was studying law at St John’s,” recalls Graham, who made his first recording as a conductor aged just 22.
“He and I met and we tried out playing Latin music for cello and piano, which is not something that had been done really before.
“And it worked so beautifully – classical strings, they just bring so much of the melodic aspects of this music to life… and then over the intervening 25 years or so, we’ve grown into a much larger band.
“So our standard line-up now is there’s six or seven of us, with percussion, bass, vocals. It’s a big, exciting, fun sound, but with that little colouring of the classical strings, which just makes it so accessible and attractive to a European audience.”
Now in his 61st year of artistic life and still as amazing a performer as ever, Fruko’s songs run like a thread though the salsa scene of the 1970s and ’80s.
He has made more than 40 albums with his band, Fruko y sus Tesos, since 1969 and has recently enjoyed something of a career resurgence, thanks to having his music featured in a very well-known Netflix series.
Fruko also recorded the official song for Colombia’s national football team in 1998, when the country’s selección played in that year’s FIFA World Cup – the international swansong of Carlos Valderrama, arguably Colombia’s most famous player.
“A couple of years ago, we started collaborating with this guy called Fruko,” explains Graham, who as a cellist has performed across Europe and North and South America.
“He was a massive star in Latin America and North America in the ’70s, and his salsa tracks are the all-time classics of salsa nightclubs and salsa dancing.
“He passed out of public knowledge a little bit, and then one of his most iconic tracks, called El Preso, was used in the Netflix show, Narcos, and so he shot back into public view.
“And oddly, he got in touch with us and proposed doing a collaboration about two-and-a-half years ago.
“So we did an album [Salsa Classics] and we launched that in London, Madrid and Bogotá, which was very exciting, and thanks to the Colombian airline, Avianca, we’ve managed to get Fruko to come back to the UK and to come and play in Cambridge.
“So it’s very exciting; we will be playing a whole load of music from across Latin America, featuring of course some of Fruko’s most famous tracks, but also a wide variety of styles of music from across Latin America.
“Some slow and soulful, some gentle and coaxing, and quite a lot of fun and danceable music.
“We’re expecting that there’ll be a strong Latin contingent who will take to the floor and do some dancing.
“It’s a half past five concert, so it’s really perfect for kids, families… a sort of pre-dinner, pre-cocktail bit of music and it should be fun, I hope.”
Classico Latino have released five studio albums – one of which was recorded in Havana, Cuba – and have entertained audiences from Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club in Soho to the foothills of the Colombian Andes.
Born in Edinburgh, Graham grew up in Cambridge and his father worked at The Leys.
Graham was an undergraduate at St John’s, graduating in 1999, before attending the Royal Academy of Music as a postgraduate.
After making his way as a freelance musician in London, he returned to Cambridge and worked at Magdalene College and then at Corpus Christi College, before taking up his present role at Emmanuel three years ago.
Graham has also been choir director for the now-defunct St John’s Voices (SJV) and New Cambridge Singers.
Out of the ashes of the former grew a new choir, Cambridge University Schola Cantorum, which “against all the odds is flourishing and building on the 11 years of SJV,” says Graham.
The culmination of the choir’s first year of activity will see them join forces with the BBC Singers, the UK’s only full-time professional chamber choir, for a performance of Rachmaninov’s epic All-Night Vigil – described by Graham as a “total masterpiece” – at Ely Cathedral on 13 June.
“Cambridge has a worldwide reputation for choral excellence; I mean Oxford’s pretty good too but there’s nowhere really like Cambridge for the number of really fine choirs that travel around the world and are seen as the best in the world,” says Graham.
“And people come from literally all over the world to see the college choirs. King’s, of course, is the most famous, but there are so many that are really, really good.
“But there was hasn’t been one which was a university brand before, and so we were able to step into that niche.”
Catch Classico Latino live with Fruko at Great St Mary’s Church, Cambridge, on Saturday, 17 May, at 5.30-7.30pm. Tickets, priced £7.50-£25, are available from classicolatino.com/next-events.
Tickets for Cambridge University Schola Cantorum’s concert in June, priced £9.50-£42, are available from elycathedral.org/events/cambridge-schola-bbc-singers. For more on the choir, go to cambridgeschola.com.
