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Dos Almas

Kemuel Roig

Label: Life In Music
Released: 2025
Views: 318

Tracks

Kenneth’s [Heaven’s Gift]; Convergencia; Quiéreme Mucho; Kendrick [Blessed Child]; Almendra; Alma con Alma; Home; Historia de Amor [Para Noemí]; The Almighty.

Personnel

Album Description

Acclaimed Cuban-American pianist and composer Kemuel Roig releases his latest production, an ambitious project titled Dos Almas, which is captured in nine tracks full of meaning and sensitivity. With this new work, Roig reveals his intention to strip back the essence of his music, leaving the piano as his sole accompaniment, and exposing to the world his intimate dialogue with the instrument that has defined his career.

Since its inception, Kemuel Roig’s career has been marked by a constant dialogue with various Instrumental formats and collaborations with musical legends such as Al Di Meola, Arturo Sandoval, Ed Calle, Randy Brecker and Chris Potter, as well as backing iconic voices like Aymée Nuviola. With Dos Almas, the artist returns to his roots and explores, without artifice, the emotional power of the piano, reinterpreting classics from the Cuban repertoire and fusing them with classical music, jazz, and other sounds that have shaped his path.

The album is a compilation of deeply personal interpretations. In his own words, Roig states: “I recorded music that has a lot of meaning to me, works that have shaped my life over the years, by Cuban composers I appreciate and who have been fundamental in my story. This album is a reflection of my intimacy, a sincere declaration addressed to my wife and children—as in ‘Historia de Amor [Para Noemí]’, ‘Kenneth [Heaven’s Gift]’, ‘Kendrick [Blessed Child]’, and ‘Home’—and to the spirituality that shaped my existence, captured in ‘The Almighty’.”

According to renowned musicographer Rosa Marquetti, Dos Almas combines lyrical and emotional interpretations, both respectful and transgressive, in which each track is a personal and universal journey. The instrumental versions of songs such as "Convergencia" (by Marcelino Guerra and Bienvenido J. Gutiérrez), "Quiéreme Mucho" (by Gonzalo Roig), and "Alma con Alma" (by Juanito Márquez) demonstrate Kemuel Roig's ability to reinvent classical works— eluding the need for a voice that imposes limits—and allowing the piano to express emotion in its purest form. Similarly, in "Almendra" (by Abelardo Valdés), the pianist expands the expressive possibilities of the classical danzón, highlighting the lyricism of its segments and the percussive prominence of the piano through jazz-style improvisations. Roig’s journey, which began in Cuba at the tender age of four and was consolidated after his arrival in the United

States at thirteen, is a reflection of the intersection of cultural and musical influences. His tireless pursuit of integrating his roots with new sonic expressions is captured in Dos Almas, an album that validates the need for dialogue between the artist and his instrument, and which presents itself as a window into his inner universe.

As he himself expresses, Dos Almas is "a recording that is a dream come true” and an invitation for the listener to immerse themselves in a world of emotion, tradition, and experimentation.