One of the great Cuban pianists — Rubén González was the keyboard voice of the Buena Vista Social Club, a master of the danzón and son piano traditions who played with extraordinary warmth and spontaneity well into his 70s.
González spent his career working with major Cuban ensembles including Arsenio Rodríguez's conjunto, but was largely forgotten in Cuba by the 1990s — his piano had gone untuned for years and he had severe arthritis. When Ry Cooder brought him into the Buena Vista sessions, his playing immediately stunned everyone in the room.
His style — rooted in the danzón tradition but incorporating jazz voicings and an improvisational ease — is displayed throughout the Buena Vista recordings and Wim Wenders' documentary. He went on to record several solo albums before his death, documenting a lifetime's worth of accumulated musical intelligence that nearly went unrecorded.