Coming up this Saturday October 19th at the Osborne Taphouse at 112 Osborne starting at 9pm, Winnipeg audiences are invited to dance and soak up the energy, vibrancy, and heat of salsa music with Winnipeg’s All Star Salsa Band Curubandé
Led by Jaime Chinchilla who is originally from Costa Rica, Curubandé promises to put on a show that is full of energy, and fun that will get your hips and feet moving to the beat and sounds of Latin America. It is an opportunity to forget that we are looking down the barrel of another Winnipeg winter and for one evening enjoy a trip south.
Curubandé is named for Curubandé de Liberia in Costa Rica. Known for its beautiful warm pools of water, deep canyons, and pristine jungles, Curubandé is representative of the environment that the musicians in the group play in. As band leader Jaime Chinchilla says, “It’s my favorite place in the world...it’s my ideal place.... and for us, that is what the band is. We are all in our element when we are playing with Curubandé.”
Started in Brandon, while Chinchilla was working on a classical piano degree at Brandon University, Curubandé started as a way of scratching a musical itch that Chinchilla needed to address. “We are Latin-Americans, so you can’t get it [Latin-American music] out of you. I just knew I needed to form a band, and there was a need for that in Brandon with a lot of Latin-Americans moving there.”
The group started as a quasi-community band in Brandon that entertained and brought Latin-American music to the wheat city for a few years. The group closed down over the COVID pandemic; post pandemic, Chinchilla and his friend Peruvian singer Carlos Egos decided to resurrect the band here in Winnipeg. As Egos explains, “We met with a different perspective... more mature in our projects, more musically mature, and more professional members. That is why it is called All-Stars. Many of the musicians are stars in their own projects.”
The line-up on Saturday does indeed feature some of the best seasoned professional musicians in the city. Rodrigo Muñoz on percussion and guitar, Amber Epp on keyboards and vocals, Daniel Chinchilla on percussion, Columbian bassist Manuel Noriega, Venezuelan percussionist Rafael Talavera, Andrew Littleford and Mathew Walden on horns with Carlos Ecos singing and Jaime Chinchilla leading and performing on piano.
For Chinchilla and Egos the band’s personnel are something very special. “When we got all those people together, we really thought ‘Wow...we really need to call it an all-star band.’ We couldn’t believe it. It is a privilege to have those amazing players with us,” states Chinchilla.
The show on Saturday starts at 9pm and ends at 2am. Curubandé will perform three smokin’ hot sets of music consisting of standards and originals written by Chinchilla. “I want the audience to be anxious to have more...that 2am is not enough.... that is the feeling that I want them to have,” says Ecos.
Curubandé will for sure leave you wanting more!
Curubandé performs this Saturday October 19th at the Osborne Taphouse at 112 Osborne. For more details on how to get tickets click here.