Traditions say a lot about who we are. As metaphors into the mind, body and soul of our being, traditions are the rituals used to refine the various creative practices that shape our presence in the world. For many musicians this means honoring the cultural influences that inform their music. But for some, it’s far more intimate; it’s part of a bloodline, the essence of a family tree that has promoted musical excellence for generations.ng woman in the city.

Enter Laura Beatriz, the Cuban pianist, composer, arranger and bandleader, a bright new voice seeking to make her mark with Momentos (Moments) an EP showcasing the vibrant pulse of her unique musical language. Emanating from a long Peruchín family history of talented musicians and educators, Beatriz knows first hand about the kind of dedication required to represent the most authentic traditions within Afro-Cuban music that she’s known all her life.

Straddling the cultural divide between her Cuban homeland and the bustling artistic energy of life in Rotterdam, Beatriz has cultivated artistic collaborations that have become the passport for her inventive musical personality. One look at her band (percussionist, Steven Brezet, drummer Daan Arets, bassist Patricia Mancheño, trombonist Pablo Martinez, and saxophonist Sylvester “Sly5thAve” Uzoma Onyejiaka II, and special guests flutist Camila Argudin, Gerardo Rosales on güiro, synth and keyboardist Emiel van Rijthoven and Leonid Muños on bata) and you’ll find a “United Nations” of inquisitive musical talents collected from The Netherlands, Spain, Venezuela, Cuba and the US.

Having begun her journey on the piano at age four with lessons from her grandmother, Beatriz later trained as a classical pianist at a Cuban conservatory, all while embracing Jazz and R&B masters like Keith Jarret, Chick Corea, and Stevie Wonder. Throughout her life, Beatriz’s most influential teacher has been her father, the master pianist/educator Rodolfo Argudin Peruchín, the key factor in how deftly she navigates traditional Cuban music, Latin Jazz and other musical disciplines that make up the African influence on Caribbean music.

For the past four years she’s been living and playing in the Netherlands, exploring how to invigorate her Afro-Cuban roots with curious arrangements and the informed use of synthesizers. After what could have been a promising career as a classical pianist, Beatriz soon found herself migrating towards music ingrained in her life by legendary musicians within her immediate family. From the familiarity of classical and folkloric music her father shared and the Cuban Latin Jazz influence of her great-grandfather pianist Pedro Jústiz Nolasco Peruchín, to the seductive beats of partido alto and the popular 6/8 rhythmic structure of Afro-Cuban music, Beatriz gained an elite sense for rhythm while building confidence as a performer even while often banned from bandstands because she was a woman. Still, fear never entered the equilibrium of her ambition and passion to play music on her own terms. “I’m not afraid because I’m well prepared. And if I’m well prepared I will perform excellently,” she often says.

Moving on from her initial quartet, Beatriz kept a keen eye for talent, and big ears for the harmonious sonority she demands from the sax/flute/trombone combination within the sextet she now leads. Even her percussionists know they need to play melodically, working through the fluid chord changes of her arrangements that accentuate the spiritual dimension of her work. Composing quickly her work emerges from visualizing sound as much as utilizing her sophisticated understanding of contemporary music theory.