Jorge Vistel At Dock Street Jazz Club

Jorge Vistel
Dock Street Jazz Club
Belfast, N. Ireland
January 11, 2026

It took Jorge Vistel just one trumpet solo—a hypnotic four minutes of deft lyricism and technical bravura—to signal to the audience that it was in for a treat. Such a balance of emotional heft and virtuosity made it easy to conclude that music is in the blood of the Cuban trumpeter. Maybe too easy.

To be sure, growing up in Santiago de Cuba, Vistel was surrounded by music. His grandfather, El Viejo Vistel, and his father, Jorge Vistel, were respected musicians. In fact, few close relatives did not play an instrument, sing, or dance. As kids, Jorge and his brother, tenor saxophonist Maikel Vistel, honed their chops together. But that is only half the story. At the tender ages of 9 and 10, respectively, the siblings left home to study music at the Art School of Havana, some 880 kilometers by road from home and family (think about that for a minute). Music may well have been in the Vistel DNA, but it was forged early on by courage and by the discipline of long years of dedicated study.

Not only was this Vistel's first visit to Belfast, it was also his first time playing with drummer David Lyttle and organist Myles Drennan. The three had met just an hour before taking to the stage. No rehearsal, no safety net. "That's what this music is about," Lyttle said at the outset. "Meeting, communicating and expressing ourselves." For two hours, jazz standards provided the meeting ground, improvisation the vocabulary of communication and self-expression.

If Vistel's melodicism on staples like "Come Rain Or Come Shine" conveyed the poignancy of Chet Baker, and his helter-skelter runs at faster tempi the passion of Dizzy Gillespie, such comparisons were fleeting. In essence, Vistel's phrasing was distinctive—an arresting confluence of Afro-Cuban and Afro- Caribbean colors, contemporary cool—more Ron Miles than Baker—and bebop. Also in the mix were glints of a more avant-garde sensibility, one that would surface in droning sustain, muted half-valve burr and piercing, singing-kettle high notes. Not for a second did it feel as if Vistel was coasting or playing by rote.

In what amounted to a loosely structured jam-session-style format, there was no place for original tunes—a fact that denied the audience a glimpse of the compositional side of Vistel's artistry. His debut album as leader, Cimarrón (Inner Circle Music, 2014), featured ten original tunes—the exception being Osvaldo Farrés' "Tres Palabras." It was to a more famous Farrés tune that the trio turned with "Quizás, quizás, quizás." An extended unaccompanied trumpet intro paved the way for a beautifully understated reading of this handsome bolero. Lyttle's hands worked skin and metal like a conguero, his infectious rhythms underpinning Drennan's smoldering blues and Vistel's fiery response.

From slow-burning swing and Latin melodicism to fleet changes, the trio's intuitive interplay belied the fact that this was a first encounter. Vistel may have been the star of the show—and his soloing was spectacular—but no less transfixing was Drennan's juggling of grooving left-hand bass lines and right-hand ornamentation when comping. Lyttle's kit work drew the eyes as much as the ears—his keen sense of swing coupled with a penchant for spicy accents and wicked bass bombs.

A change to the script came with Lyttle's innocent enquiry as to whether there happened to be any trumpeters in the audience. By extraordinary coincidence, two of his young charges from the Jazz Juniors improvisation program made a beeline for the stage with their trumpets. Mateo Moore (18) and Arthur Boyce (13) commanded the stage on Sonny Rollins' bluesy "Sonnymoon for Two," breezing through the head in unison before each soloed with impressive improvisatory spirit and skill aplenty—much to the audience's delight. Solos from Vistel, Drennan and a sinewy melodic effort from Lyttle built up to the finale, where the three trumpeters united on the outro.

Strange to think that, by virtue of sharing the bandstand with Vistel, Moore, from Carrickfergus, and Boyce, from Lisburn, are now just six degrees of separation from Duke Ellington. Jazz has a way of folding time in on itself. Vistel played with Quincy Jones, Jones with Billie Holiday, Holiday with Lester Young, Young played in Andy Kirk's band, alongside pianist Mary Lou Williams—an Ellington collaborator in her own right. Six short hops, a century of jazz history.

Jackie McLean's "Little Melonae" ushered in impassioned trading back and forth between the three principal musicians, with more fevered brilliance from Vistel.

With the absence of a backstage area—or wings—ruling out the walk-off encore bait, the trio announced its adieu with an elegant reading of Jimmy Van Heusen's "Like Someone in Love." Written while the flames of World War II still raged, its melodious charms must have provided comfort and uplift to many in those perilous times. All these years later, the world does not seem any safer, but as long as jazz musicians from different backgrounds, cultures, languages and religions continue to weave their improvisatory magic together, the belief in a better future remains alive.

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