1:00 pm, Cidade

Cidade is based on the sound of violin and nylon string guitar, instruments with a long tradition in Latin American music. We play tangos for dancing and tangos for listening from Argentina, bossa nova from Brazil, and Latin jazz standards from Cuba and Puerto Rico, etc. Some of the greatest composers were guitarists: Antonio Carlos Jobim, Luis Bonfa, and Joao Gilberto.

I came to the format of performing tango at jazz gigs because it was something different for the band to sink its teeth into. The type of improvisation we incorporate into the tangos is very different from the melodic improv and the advanced harmonic concepts we are exploring with jazz tunes. The improv for tangos is more rhythmic and is solely to keep the people dancing.

 

2:00 pm, Jose Gonzalez

"One of the most prestigious contemporary music ensembles of Puerto Rico" - Marisa Rosado, President, Casa Aboy Cultural Center, San Juan Puerto Rico

Guitarist, composer and virtuoso Cuatro player, Jose Gonzalez, is a top performer of contemporary Latin music. Acclaimed for his original compositions featuring "the Cuatro", (Puerto Rico's national instrument), his eleven self-produced recordings have become bestsellers. His music is featured on NBC, PBS, CNN, cable TV, as well as four "Putumayo World Music" CDs, the Bose Corp. "World Music"CD and the PBS "Visions of Puerto Rico" TV special. Artist site: criolloclassico.com

 

3:00 pm, Markamusic

MarKamusic 's musical selections have emerged as a combination of many themes: their own interpretation of ancient Andean aboriginal melodies; songs arising from the twentieth-century Latin American struggle for Political peace; the sometimes jarring, sometimes hypnotic Música Negroide of Peru; of folk-rock protest music--banned in the mid 1970s under pain of death by the military Juntas; and a handful of favorite Caribbean and Latin-American torch songs and high-energy pop tunes. The sum of it all is that chairs are often empty or kicked over at the end of the night: everyone is up on their feet, prancing or kicking about like crazy or taking part in a madcap, coiling conga-line.

Today, MarKamusic --an improbable alliance of an Ecuadorian Andean musician, three Puerto Rican folk, salsa, Caribbean and Urban-Latin Jazz musicians, a Peruvian popular music multi-instrumentalist and aboriginal-communications scholar, an Uruguayan Funk/rocker and a Guatemalan- Mayan folk and traditional multi-instrumentalist has predominantly been following the festival, concert and educational-enrichment-event circuits all over the United States for the last eight years. Although they have avoided the club scene altogether, sometimes they can be seen playing the older music halls and some of the principal big-city international-music clubs in New England. Artist site: markamusic.com

 

 

4:00 pm, Arturo O'Farrill Sextet

Winner of the Latin Jazz USA Outstanding Achievement Award for 2003, was born in Mexico and grew up in New York City. In 2002, Mr. O'Farrill and Wynton Marsalis created the Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra for Jazz at Lincoln Center due in part to a large and very demanding body of substantial music in the genre of Latin and Afro Cuban Jazz that deserves to be much more widely appreciated and experienced by the general jazz audience. His debut album with the Orchestra "Una Noche Inolvidable" earned a GRAMMY award nomination in 2006.

In 1995 Mr. O'Farrill agreed to direct the band that preserved much of his father's music, Chico O'Farrill's Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra, which has been in residence at Birdland, New York City's famed nightclub, for the past nine years, as well as performing throughout the world as a solo artist and with his smaller groups.

O'Farrill has toured throughout the U.S. Europe and Asia. A recognized composer Mr. O'Farrill has received commissions from Meet the Composer, Jazz at Lincoln Center, The Philadelphia Music Project , and The Big Apple Circus. Artist site: arturoofarrill.com

PROGRAM AND TIMES SUBJECT TO CHANGE WITHOUT PRIOR NOTICE