Música in Motion celebrates the artistic interaction and mutual inspiration that flows between music composition and dance choreography with a special repertoire drawn from Arturo O’Farrill’s innovative collaborations with noted dance companies from the US and beyond. This concert offers a rare opportunity to hear music composed specifically for dance from a different perspective.
Arturo and the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra will present works that have been performed by Ballet Hispanico, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, Malpaso Contemporary (Cuba), and Ronald K. Brown’s Evidence Dance. Many with new arrangements, some of the compositions will be performed for the first time in front of a live audience.
The show is part of the Afro Latin Jazz Alliances Performance Season and continues its celebration of the 15th Anniversary of the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra and will feature special guest artists.
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GRAMMY Award winning pianist, composer and educator Arturo O’Farrill — leader of the “first family of Afro-Cuban Jazz” (New York Times) — was born in Mexico and grew up in New York City. Son of the late, great composer Chico O’Farrill, Arturo was educated at Manhattan School of Music, Brooklyn College Conservatory and the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College. He played piano in Carla Bley’s Big Band from 1979 through 1983 and earned a reputation as a soloist in groups led by Dizzy Gillespie, Steve Turre, Freddy Cole, Lester Bowie, Wynton Marsalis and Harry Belafonte. In 2002, he established the GRAMMY® winning Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra in order to bring the vital musical traditions of Afro Latinjazz to a wider general audience, and to greatly expand the contemporary Latin jazz big band repertoire through commissions to artists across a wide stylistic and geographic range.
Following his 2009 GRAMMY® Award for “Best Latin Jazz Album” for the Orchestras debut recording, Song for Chico (ZOHO), O’Farrill has received numerous GRAMMY® nominations and most recently two GRAMMY® wins for The Offense of the Drum (“Best Latin Jazz Album”) and Cuba: The Conversation Continues (“The Afro Latin Jazz Suite,” “Best Instrumental Composition”). Cuba: The Conversation Continues has also won a 2016 Latin GRAMMY® for “Best Latin Jazz Album.” On September 15 of this year, Arturo and the orchestra will be releasing their newest disc, “Familia – a Tribute to Bebo + Chico”, together with the Cuban master pianist, Chucho Valdes.