Musician Eddie Palmieri, pioneer in the Latin Jazz, Rumba and Salsa music, died on Wednesday at the age of 88. The pianist, composer and band leader was the first Latino musician in 1975 to win a Grammy. Later in his career, seven more followed.
Palmieri had been sick for a long time and died at home, says his daughter in return for The New York Times. That newspaper calls the pianist one of the greatest musical geniuses of the twentieth century. From the moment he founded his first fixed eight -member formation LA Perfecta in 1961, according to the newspaper, Palmieri was “The driving force behind many of the stylistic changes and creative jumps in the Latin music,” and he set the norm for what would later be known as Salsa.
The musician, born in Spanish Harlem in New York, started playing the piano at a young age. From the age of thirteen, he also played the timbales, two sharp sounding drums on a tripod, in the orchestra of his uncle. Later he returned to the keys. “I am a frustrated percussionist, so I respond to the piano,” said the musician in the biography on his own website.
Palmieri had a “hefty attack” on both piano and timbales, where his timbales sticks at least were not against resistant during a concert in Vredenburg in Utrecht, so drew NRC Op in 1981. After the concert, the newspaper called Palmieri’s orchestra “one of the most exciting and especially progressive salsa orchestras of the moment”. Eighteen years later the same reviewer described him after a concert as “Pianoleuwe.”