THU OCT 1 2015
Orquesta Buena Vista Social Club ®
CHAN CENTRE FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS
PHOTO: Dunja Dopsaj
“We wanted our traditional music to live on and
PHOTO: Carlos Pericás
to enchant the world and this is what our tours achieved. It has been an incredible part of my career and life.” - Omara Portuondo
Orquesta Buena Vista Social Club ®
Presented by the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts
Pre-show talk
7:15pm, Royal Bank Cinema
Musical Lives and the Sounds of Cuban History
With UBC professor Dr. Alejandra Bronfman
Concert
8:00pm, Chan Shun Concert Hall
Omara Portuondo lead vocals Eliades Ochoa guitar & vocals Jesus “Aguaje” Ramos musical director, trombone & vocals Manuel Guajiro Mirabal trumpet Barbarito Torres laud Papi Oviedo tres Pedro Pablo double bass Rolando Luna piano Idania Valdés vocals & percussion Carlos Calunga vocals Alberto La Noche bongos Filiberto Sanchez timbales Andres Coayo congas Luis Alemañy trumpet Guajirito Mirabal trumpet
Set list will be announced from the stage.
There will be no intermission.
Please remember to turn off your phones, and note that photography and recording are not permitted. Thank you!
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PHOTO: Alejandro Perez
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Orquesta Buena Vista Social Club
®
After 16 years thrilling audiences around the world, the Orquesta Buena Vista Social Club ® now bids ‘adios’ with their farewell world tour and final performance ever in Vancouver. The Orquesta Buena Vista Social Club® grew out of the 1997 release of the GRAMMYwinning best-selling album Buena Vista Social Club™, and its line-up continues to include a number of the original artists featured on the landmark recording and film. But that was only the starting point of an extraordinary journey. Over the years, there have been further acclaimed albums, GRAMMY awards and a packed schedule of sold-out tours and concerts. The Adios Tour represents the distillation of more than a thousand shows over 16 years involving more than forty musicians. During that time the group has evolved into a customized, dynamic, multi-generational big band in which veterans and younger performers have combined to celebrate Cuban musical tradition with flair and élan. From son and guajira to danzon and bolero, cha-cha-cha and rumba, Orquesta Buena Vista Social Club® showcases the classic styles and rhythms of Cuban music with both fresh songs and familiar numbers. The Adios Tour includes more than 60 shows throughout New Zealand, Australia, Europe, North and South America. After performing across the word, the tour will end where the journey began with a homecoming gala performance in Havana. This tour coincides with the release of the album Lost and Found, a collection of previously unreleased tracks –some recorded at the first legendary sessions in Havana and others during the extraordinarily rich outpouring of music that followed.
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Omara Portuondo (vocals) Omara Portuondo began her career as a dancer at the famous Tropicana Club when she was still a teenager. In addition to dancing alongside her sister Haydee, the two women also sang with a group called Los Loquibambla, a combo that specialized in a Cubanized version of the bossa nova with touches of American jazz. Omara and Haydee – joined by Elena Burke and Moraima Secada – became the Quarteto Las d’Aida, directed by pianist Aida Diestro. Omara toured with the group for 15 years before recording her first solo album, Magia Negra, in 1959. She stayed with the quartet for several more years before launching her solo career in 1967. Omara also sung with Cuba’s high-profile Orquesta Aragón, with which she recorded several albums and toured all over the world through the ‘70s and ‘80s. Propelled by her success with Buena Vista, Omara entered the 21st century as an international sensation, with tours and festival dates that crisscrossed the globe. Her awards and accolades in that time have been numerous, and include a Latin GRAMMY for her solo album, Gracias. In Spring 2011, she released an album alongside the pianist Chucho Valdés, entitled Omara & Chucho, which has been critically acclaimed.
Manuel ‘Guajiro’ Mirabal (trumpet) Guajiro has been a key figure in the Cuban music scene for over 50 years and has played with just about every Cuban star you could mention during his years in the Orquesta Riverside, the Orquesta Cubana de Música Moderna, and playing at the famous Tropicana Club. With these groups and others such as the Estrellas Areito and Opus 13, Guajiro Mirabal toured Europe and Latin America extensively. During World Circuit’s now legendary recording blitz in Havana in 1996, Guajiro featured on all three of these formative albums: Afro-Cuban All Stars’ A Toda Cuba Le Gusta, Buena Vista Social Club™, and Introducing Rubén González. Having been an integral part of many albums in the Buena Vista series and a key member of Ibrahim Ferrer’s touring band, Guajiro released his debut solo album, the Latin GRAMMY nominated Buena Vista Social Club™ Presents Manuel Guajiro Mirabal in 2004.
Jesús ‘Aguaje’ Ramos (musical director, trombone, vocals)
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Jesús was born in 1951 in Pinar del Rio where he began his musical studies in the National School of Arts. He started playing the trombone in local groups until 1979 when he moved to Havana and began playing and touring worldwide with the great female quartet Los D’Aida. That same year he took part in the “Estrellas de Areito” recordings. During the 1980s and 1990s, Aguaje toured and recorded with a number of artists and groups such as the Caribe Expreso, Adalberto Álvarez, Reinaldo Montesinos, Omara Portuondo, Tata Güines, and Richard Egües to name a few. Aguaje has played on both the Buena Vista Social Club™ and Afro-Cuban All Stars recordings, as well as the solo albums of Ibrahim Ferrer, Rubén González and Omara Portuondo. He was Rubén González’s musical director and he has been touring extensively since 1997 with the various Buena Vista Social Club™ projects.
Barbarito Torres (laúd) Barbarito’s professional career started in 1970 with Serenata Yumunina, a group led by Higinio Mullens. After three years he was discharged and travelled with Siembra Cultural, later renamed Grupo Yarabi. Eventually he settled in Havana and became a permanent member of Orquesta Cubana de Cuerdas. Later he joined Celina Gonzalez and her Grupo Campoalegre as their musical director; at the same time, he was featured with Grupo Manguare, recording and touring with both groups. Barbarito is well known for his contributions to the Afro Cuban All Stars and the Buena Vista Social Club™. Both ensembles won a number of awards, including a GRAMMY for the Buena Vista Social Club album in 1998. Since the Buena Vista project, Barbarito continued with his solo career, touring around the world with his group. In 1999 his first solo album Havana Café was released, followed by self-titled album Barbarito Torres in 2003.
Eliades Ochoa (guitar and vocals) Hailing from the countryside near Santiago in the east of Cuba, Eliades Ochoa’s roots are in guajira (Cuban country music) and his trademark cowboy hat and penchant for wearing black have led some to dub him ‘Cuba’s Johnny Cash’. His contribution to the Buena Vista Social Club sessions included his distinctive guitar playing, lead vocals on “El Cuarto de Tula”, and his own guajira showcase on “El Carretero”. Away from the Buena Vista connection, Eliades recorded the 1998 album CubAfrica with Manu Dibango. In 1999, Sublime Illusion was released, with producer John Wooler and the special collaborations of Charlie Musselwhite, David Hidalgo from Los Lobos, and Ry Cooder. The recording was nominated for a Best Tropical Latin Album GRAMMY award. In October 2010, AfroCubism was released, where Eliades Ochoa and Grupo Patria play together with Malian musicians such as Toumani Diabate (kora), Bassekou Kouyate (ngoni), Kasse Mady Diabate (singer), and Djelimady Tounkara (electric guitar). AfroCubism was nominated for Best World Music Album at the 2012 GRAMMYs.
“ Two hours in the company of the Orquesta
Buena Vista Social Club ® is a heart-warming, uplifting experience everyone should sample at least once” - Edinburgh Evening News
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Exploring the role of the arts and artists in society. chancentre.com/connects
Musical Lives and the Sounds of Cuban History Pre-show talk with UBC’s Dr. Alejandra Bronfman 7:15pm: Royal Bank Cinema, Chan Centre Dr. Bronfman is an author and Associate Professor in the Department of History at UBC. She teaches courses in Caribbean, Latin American and Cuban history, historical theory and method, race in the Americas, and media histories. This pre-show talk will revolve around the lives of three musicians who witnessed and participated in Cuba’s tumultuous pre and post-revolutionary eras, and explore how their work speaks to the vagaries of Cuba’s past and the ironies of its present. “These songs seem so familiar. They circulate. We hear them in our friends’ houses, on our iPods, in restaurants that peddle the delicious and the exotic. And indeed, from the inception of radio and recorded sound, one of Cuba’s principal exports was its sound. Listeners all around the world sought the mellifluous sounds of the son, the cha-cha, the mambo. Cuban music witnessed the birth of jazz, and many music historians argue that Latin jazz and American jazz grew up together and are entangled with one another. If scholars can argue endlessly about definitions of genre and details of influence, what these musical forms do share is the enormous contribution of people of African descent, and as such they are gorgeous legacies born of the violence and exploitation of the slave trade. Music is the language of escape and of pain, of celebration and of mourning. These emotions are shared by people of many cultures, and expressed in particular ways by all of them. When the music of Cuba reaches our ears, it literally moves us, as its many historical registers ripple through our bodies, and make us dance.” – Dr. Alejandra Bronfman
The Caribbean African Association of UBC Are you a UBC student interested in Caribbean and African-based issues? Check out the student-run Caribbean African Association (CAA) here at UBC. CAA is a supportive community that aims to celebrate and raise awareness about Caribbean and African culture through a variety of different events and initiatives. Find out more online at: thecaa.yolasite.com
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Christine Offer awarded 2015 UBC President’s Staff Award Chan Centre Artistic Presenting Manager Christine Offer was recently honoured with the UBC Vancouver President’s Staff Award. This award was received in the Creativity and Innovation category for her vision and initiative in the development of the Chan Centre Connects series. UBC presents the President’s Service and Staff Awards annually to recognize staff members who demonstrate outstanding achievement and excellence within the UBC Community. Congratulations Christine!
at the Chan Centre
Words
in Motion
Fri Mar 18 & Sat Mar 19 2016 / 7:30pm
Telus Studio Theatre chancentre.com/beyondwords
Writer/choreographer partners Carmen Aguirre & Olivia C. Davies, Aislinn Hunter & Anusha Fernando and Nancy Lee & Paraskevas Terezakis bring three very different visions to the marriage of words and movement.
Upcoming Events at the Chan Centre Full details at chancentre.com Oct 8 at 8pm: UBC Symphony Orchestra Presented by the UBC School of Music Oct 9 + 10 at 8pm: VSO - Alexandre Bloch and Ingrid Fliter Presented by the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra as part of the Classical Traditions series at the Chan Centre
Oct 16 at 8pm: UBC Bands Presented by the UBC School of Music Oct 18 at 3pm: Jeremy Denk, piano Presented by the Vancouver Recital Society as part of the Classic Afternoons series at the Chan Centre
Oct 23 at 7:30pm: Monteverdi Vespers of 1610 Presented by Early Music Vancouver and the Vancouver Chamber Choir
Oct 24 at 8pm: Paco Peña Presented by the Chan Centre Oct 25 at 3pm: “Hollywood in Concert” with the Vancouver Pops Symphony and Choir Presented by Vancouver Orchestra Club Oct 30 at 8pm: UBC Choirs Presented by the UBC School of Music Oct 31 at 8pm: Welcome to Night Vale with musical guest Eliza Rickman Presented by Live Nation PACO PEÑA
Tell us what you think! We want to hear from you. Please visit chancentre.com/feedback and let us know about your experience tonight. 10
The Chan Centre for the Performing Arts at UBC Joyce Hinton Cameron McGill Jazel Argente Carl Armstrong Wendy Atkinson Brad Danyluk Kara Gibbs David Humphrey Beng Khoo Flora Lew Glenda Makela Trevor Mangion Claire Mohun Christine Offer George Pereira Andrew Riter Nadia Roberts Lyndsey Roberts
Co-Managing Director Co-Managing Director Administrative & Rentals Assistant Events & Customer Service Manager Programming & Rentals Manager Head Audio Technician Marketing & Communications Manager Production Manager Operations Clerk Financial Coordinator Financial & Programming Clerk Ticket Operations Manager Marketing & Communications Coordinator Artistic Presenting Manager Production Clerk Head Lighting Technician Events & Front of House Coordinator Ticket Office Supervisor
Members of Cupe 2950 Front of House, Stage, and Ticketing Staff Megan Barnabe Katherine Neil Valentina Montilla
Administration Assistant, Work Learn Student Marketing & Communications Assistant, Work Learn Student Artistic Presentations Assistant, Work Learn Student
Administration Office
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Graphic Design by Copilot Design Media Relations by Laura Murray Public Relations
The Chan Centre would like to thank our 2015/2016 series sponsors: The Chan Endowment Fund and the UBC Faculty of Arts
A SOUND EXPERIENCE Paco Peña • OCT 24 Youssou N’Dour • NOV 10 Carminho and Sara Tavares • NOV 21 Branford Marsalis • FEB 13 Dee Dee Bridgewater and Irvin Mayfield with the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra • FEB 27 Anoushka Shankar • APR 8 Arlo Guthrie • APR 21 Cécile McLorin Salvant • MAY 1
Tickets and info at: chancentre.com