Cuban Christmas

Sarah Willis is a horn player with the Berlin Philharmonic, but also works with The Sarahbanda, a group of Cuban musicians she formed while in Havana working on her Mozart y Mambo project. The septet’s second album is a Christmas anthology, putting a distinctively Cuban slant on a selection of seasonal favourites. Their upbeat take on Jingle Bells is typical, with twinkling piano breaks, rasping trumpet licks, and a swinging horn solo from Willis herself. Six numbers from Tchaikovsky’s ballet The Nutcracker (arranged as The Cuban Nutcracker Suite) form the backbone of the programme, with Jorge Aragón’s chattering piano in “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” and the mazy percussion patterns of “Trepak” among the highlights. Yuniet Lombida’s soaring saxophone solo in Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas” is another standout moment, and the album closes with a joyously loose-limbed breeze through “Feliz Navidad”, with Carlos Calunga on lead vocals.