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Concert de lancement : 19 août au Dizzy’s Club (Jazz at Lincoln Center)
Summary: On Jewels, guitarist and composer Lolivone de la Rosa blends bebop, Afro Puerto Rican rhythms, and intimate storytelling into a debut of remarkable maturity. Rich in warmth, heritage, and lyrical musicianship, the album introduces a distinctive new voice whose future appears exceptionally promising.
Lolivone de la Rosa’s Jewels: A Stunning Jazz Debut Rooted in Puerto Rican Tradition
Just after dawn, I found myself pressing play on Jewels with no expectations whatsoever. I knew nothing about Lolivone de la Rosa. Even the album title, barely visible on the cover, seemed to whisper rather than announce itself. Yet there was something immediately reassuring about it.
From the opening notes of “Si Por Mi Llueve,” a bebop gem infused with Puerto Rican flavor, de la Rosa establishes a distinctive musical personality. Her guitar work is delicate but assured, favoring nuance over display. Rather than dominating the arrangements, she often guides them from within, weaving melodic lines through the ensemble with remarkable restraint. There is precision in her phrasing, but also warmth and patience. The rhythm section, meanwhile, moves with the effortless grace of a calm seaside morning. Before long, I had stopped listening analytically and simply allowed myself to be carried along by the music.
Rooted in her Puerto Rican heritage, de la Rosa embraces both the bebop tradition and the art of storytelling. Throughout Jewels, original compositions sit comfortably alongside reimagined standards and tributes to folkloric traditions. The album moves seamlessly between straight ahead jazz, Afro Puerto Rican and Afro Cuban rhythms, and intimate, deeply personal writing. At the same time, it serves as a tribute to the mentors, collaborators and family members who helped shape her artistic journey.
Every piece feels connected to lived experience. Childhood memories of radio broadcasts and neighborhood heroes coexist with reflections on pandemic isolation, resilience and humor in the face of adversity. The result is an album that honors tradition while remaining firmly committed to exploration.
There is also a lingering sense of nostalgia running through much of the record. At times, the music feels like a form of gentle poetry, echoing voices such as Felipe Luciano, the poet, broadcaster and lifelong advocate of jazz and culturally rooted music. For any artist, the place one comes from inevitably finds its way into the work, often through a dialogue with those who came before.
Yet de la Rosa’s music resists easy comparison. It sounds unmistakably like her own. Remarkably, this debut already suggests the arrival of a major voice, largely because she possesses a rare ability to translate the deeper currents of her inner life into music. The Puerto Rican rhythms that underpin these compositions are not mere stylistic gestures. They function as a living conversation with centuries of tradition.
The guitar deserves particular attention. In an era when technical brilliance is often mistaken for artistic depth, de la Rosa chooses a different path. Her playing is conversational rather than demonstrative, revealing a musician more interested in serving the narrative of a song than in drawing attention to herself. The approach occasionally leaves listeners wishing for a few more moments of improvisational risk taking, especially given the obvious depth of her musicianship. Yet that restraint ultimately becomes one of the album’s defining qualities. It creates space for the compositions themselves to breathe.
If there is a limitation to Jewels, it may be that its understated elegance sometimes works against its immediate impact. A handful of tracks reveal their strengths gradually rather than instantly, requiring repeated listens before their emotional and structural subtleties fully emerge. Some listeners may find themselves wishing for a greater degree of dramatic contrast across the program. Yet such reservations feel less like flaws than reflections of an artistic vision that favors depth over spectacle.
It is hardly surprising that de la Rosa chose the prestigious Jazz at Lincoln Center for her album release concert.
The title track, and the first composition she ever wrote, is dedicated to the true jewels of her life: her parents and her brother. Her father, an accomplished jeweler who once played trumpet, gave her her first guitar at the age of 13. Her mother, a singer in Puerto Rico’s first all female Bomba ensemble, instilled in her both discipline and a capacity for reinvention before embarking on a career in psychology.
That commitment to excellence extended well beyond the recording sessions. Speaking about the post production process with engineer Dave Darlington, de la Rosa admitted with a laugh that perfectionism got the better of her. What she initially imagined would be a single mixing session eventually stretched into five weeks.
“I kept coming back and saying, ‘Dave, don’t kill me, but can we lower that note by one decibel?'” she recalled. “Or I would think the trumpet or guitar was slightly too loud in one particular spot.” Darlington’s response became a fitting metaphor for the project itself: “That’s why the album is called Jewels. We’re polishing them.”
That image captures the essence of the album. Everything here feels carefully crafted without ever sounding overworked. One suspects these pieces will become even more vibrant on stage, where their warmth and rhythmic vitality can fully unfold. What ultimately distinguishes Jewels is not technical mastery, though there is plenty of that, but a profound love of music itself. De la Rosa approaches her craft with the sensibility of a poet, placing substance above display and emotional truth above virtuosity for its own sake.
As journalist Ted Panken writes in the album notes, the record offers a series of “sonic snapshots” that reflect lived experience while pointing toward continued growth and discovery. That observation feels particularly apt. Jewels is both a statement of arrival and the opening chapter of a larger artistic story.
When the album ended, the morning was fully awake. The sense of calm that accompanied those first notes had not disappeared. If anything, it had deepened. Few debut albums manage to feel this personal while remaining so outward looking, so rooted in tradition while quietly charting new territory. If Jewels is any indication of where Lolivone de la Rosa is headed, listeners would be wise to follow closely. Her most valuable discoveries may still lie ahead.
Thierry De Clemensat
Member at Jazz Journalists Association
USA correspondent for Paris-Move and ABS magazine
Editor in chief – Bayou Blue Radio, Bayou Blue News
PARIS-MOVE, June 19th, 2026
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Musicians :
INGRID JENSEN – trumpet
NED GOOLD – tenor saxophone
LOLIVONE DE LA ROSA – electric guitar, fx (10, 11)
LUIS PERDOMO – piano
JOHN BENÍTEZ – acoustic bass, electric bass (9)
JEFF “TAIN” WATTS – drums
GUESTS:
DAVID SULEIMAN – tenor saxophone (1,5)
ROGÉRIO BOCCATO – percussion:
pandeiro, tamborim, agogô bells, shaker (1,9)
JOEL E. MATEO – percussion:
Puerto Rican bomba drums, güícharo, cuá, fx (5,13)
Track Listing:
Si por mi llueve
PB & J
Interludio I
Ella & Gala
Bomba Mundo
Not In Service
Segment
Interludio II
Ibero
Tote Bag
Interludio III
Beautiful Friendship
Jewels
Produced by Lolivone de la Rosa
Co-produced by John Benítez
Recorded by Duff Harris at East Side Sound Studios, NYC
Mixed and mastered by David Darlington at Bass Hit Studios, NYC
Photography by Dwelling Media Productions