Dizzy, Chano and Chico The Original Influencers — 75 Years Later at Town Hall
Dizzy, Chano and Chico — The Original Influencers — 75 Years Later at Town Hall celebrates the monumental moments when jazz met the rhythms of Cuba and changed the face of modern music forever. In 1947, legends Dizzy Gillespie and Chano Pozo composed “Manteca” — one of the earliest foundational compositions of Afro-Cuban jazz and among Gillespie’s most famous recordings. In December ’47, Dizzy and Chano performed it live at the famed Town Hall in New York City. Consecutively, composer Chico O’Farrill’s masterpiece “Afro Cuban Jazz Suite” brought together bandleader Machito with O’Farrill and Charlie Parker, among others. O’Farrill’s work to meld modern jazz with Cuban big band continued with his collaboration with Dizzy on “The Manteca Suite.” The Afro Latin Jazz Alliance and Town Hall commemorate Dizzy, Chano and Chico for their groundbreaking blend of Latin music influences and jazz.
On January 14 at Town Hall, the continuum pushes forward 75 years later with the next generations of performers keeping Afro Cuban/Afro Latin jazz alive and well. Multi-GRAMMY Award-winning Arturo O’Farrill and his 18-piece Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra revisit the acclaimed compositions “The Manteca Suite,” and “Afro Cuban Jazz Suite” as well as new compositions and arrangements by an array of today’s most distinguished Latin jazz artists. Featured guests include Superstar of Afro Cuban Percussion Pedrito Martinez, NEA Jazz Master saxophonist Big Chief Donald Harrison, Cuban vocalist Daymé Arocena, trumpeter Jon Faddis, and emerging talents trumpeter Adam O’Farrill, drummer/percussionist Zack O’Farrill, percussionist Jacquelene Acevedo, and singer/composer Melvis Santa.
Dizzy, Chano and Chico — The Original Influencers — 75 Years Later at Town Hall is part of the on-going centennial celebrations of both Chico O’Farrill and Town Hall.
4 | @TownHallNYC ABOUT THE PROGRAM
ARTURO O’FARRILL, pianist, composer, and educator, was born in Mexico and grew up in New York City. Arturo’s professional career began with the Carla Bley Band and continued as a solo performer with a wide spectrum of artists including Dizzy Gillespie, Lester Bowie, Wynton Marsalis, and Harry Belafonte.
In 2007, he founded the Afro Latin Jazz Alliance as a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the performance, education, and preservation of Afro Latin music. Learn more about ALJA here: www.afrolatinjazz.org
In December 2010 Arturo traveled with the original Chico O’Farrill Afro Cuban Jazz Orchestra to Cuba, returning his father’s musicians to his homeland. He continues to travel to Cuba regularly as an informal Cultural Ambassador, working with Cuban musicians, dancers, and students, bringing local musicians from Cuba to the U.S. and American musicians to Cuba.
Arturo has performed with orchestras and bands including his own Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra and Arturo O’Farrill Sextet, as well as other orchestras and intimate ensembles in the U.S., Europe, Russia, Australia, and South America.
An avid supporter of all the arts, Arturo has performed with Ballet Hispanico and the Malpaso Dance Company, for whom he has written three ballets. In addition, the Alvin Ailey Dance Company has in its repertoire a ballet entitled “Open Door,” choreographed by Ron Brown to several of Arturo’s compositions and recordings. Ron Brown’s own Evidence Dance Company commissioned Arturo to compose New Conversations, which premiered in the summer of 2018 at Jacob’s Pillow in Becket, MA.
Arturo has received commissions from Meet the Composer, Jazz at Lincoln Center, The Philadelphia Music Project, The Apollo Theater, Symphony Space, the Bronx Museum of the Arts, the Young Peoples Chorus of New York, Columbia University, and the New York State Council on the Arts.
Arturo’s well-reviewed and highly-praised “Afro-Latin Jazz Suite” from the album CUBA: The Conversation Continues (Motema) took the 2016 GRAMMY Award for Best Instrumental Composition and the 2016 Latin GRAMMY Award for Best Latin Jazz Album. His powerful “Three Revolutions” from the album Familia - Tribute to Chico and Bebo, was the 2018 GRAMMY Award winner for Best Instrumental Composition, his sixth award in that category. Arturo’s album Four Questions (ZOHO) is the first to embody all original compositions, including the title track which features the brilliant orator Dr. Cornel West. This album won a GRAMMY in 2021.
Arturo was Artist in Residence for The Greene Space in New York City, for which he created a four-concert series including a newly commissioned composition. The series title was Radical Acts and Musical Deviancy. In 2020, Arturo’s weekly concerts with the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra, dubbed Virtual Birdland, topped the list of 10 Best Quarantine Concerts in The New York Times
Arturo is Professor of Global Jazz Studies and Assistant Dean for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), has been honored as a Steinway Artist for many years, and is now a Blue Note Records recording artist.
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ARTIST BIOS
THE AFRO LATIN JAZZ ORCHESTRA
- Led by Arturo O’Farrill, the multiGRAMMY-Award-winning Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra (ALJO) blends the drama of big band jazz, the culture of Latin music, and the virtuosity of 18 of the world’s most accomplished musicians. Two decades of critically-acclaimed live performances across the world have established the ALJO as the standard-bearer of big band Latin jazz.
ALJO’s innovative repertoire pushes the genre into the future, reflecting O’Farrill’s dual sensibilities of contemporary and improvisational jazz -- honed by his work with legends of the genre such as Carla Bley, Lester Bowie, and Dizzy Gillespie -- with the Latin Jazz traditions pioneered by his father, the legendary Chico O’Farrill. ALJO has collaborated with, and performed the compositions of, noted artists including Randy Weston, Carla Bley, Vijay Iyer, Antonio Sánchez, Miguel Zenón, Dafnis Prieto, Letieres Leite, Lionel Loueke, Malika Zarra and many others, including Arturo O’Farrill himself.
PEDRITO MARTINEZ - Pedro Pablo “Pedrito”
Martinez was born in Havana, Cuba, Sept 12, 1973 and began his musical career at the age of 11, with a foundation in the African-derived rumba and Yoruba traditions. Since settling in New York City in the fall of 1998, Pedrito has performed with artists including Eric Clapton, Paquito D’Rivera, Paul Simon, Chucho Valdes, Sting, and Ruben Blades.
A consummate master of Afro-Cuban folkloric music and the batá drum, he is also the world’s first-call rumbero—playing, singing, and dancing with dozens of Cuban rumba groups.
Pedrito continues to push the boundaries of Afro-Cuban music with an emphasis on the African component and a genius for rhythmic invention, while at the same time keeping his ties close to the Orisha music and rumbas he learned as a teenager.
“Pedrito Martinez…is a source of rhythmic delight and inspiration… … he is as close as traditional Afro-Cuban music has to a superstar” The New York Times
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JON FADDIS is a complete and consummate musician - conductor, composer, and educator. Marked by both intense integrity and humor, Faddis earned accolades from his close friend and mentor John Birks “Dizzy” Gillespie, who declared of Faddis, “He’s the best ever, including me!” As a trumpeter, Faddis possesses a virtually unparalleled range and full command of his instrument, making the practically-impossible seem effortless.
Born in 1953 in Oakland, CA, Faddis began playing at age seven, inspired by an appearance by Louis Armstrong on The Ed Sullivan Show. Bill Catalano (an alumnus of the Stan Kenton band) hipped Faddis to the music of Dizzy Gillespie. Meeting Dizzy Gillespie at the Monterey Jazz Festival and then sitting in with him at the Jazz Workshop in San Francisco proved to be the pivotal beginning of a unique friendship between Gillespie and Faddis, one that spanned almost three decades.
Two days before his 18th birthday, Faddis joined Lionel Hampton’s big band as a featured soloist, moving from Oakland, CA to New York. Shortly after arriving in Manhattan, Faddis was invited to sit in with the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra at the Village Vanguard; he rapidly became lead trumpeter for the band, touring the world. He soon formed his own quartet and began directing orchestras, including the GRAMMY-winning United Nation Orchestra, the Dizzy Gillespie 70th Birthday Big Band, the Dizzy Gillespie Alumni All-Stars, the Dizzy Gillespie Alumni All-Stars Big Band, the Chicago Jazz Ensemble (2004-2010), the Carnegie Hall Centennial Big Band, the Carnegie Hall Jazz Band (1992-2002), and the Jon Faddis Jazz Orchestra of New York (2003-present). Faddis has also served as guest conductor and featured artist with the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra and the San Francisco Symphony, among others.
Faddis’ distinctive trumpet appears on hundreds of records and numerous soundtracks for film and television. Faddis’ original compositions may be heard on his GRAMMY-nominated Remembrances (Chesky 1998) and TERANGA (Koch 2006) as well as Hornucopia (Epic 1991) and Into the Faddisphere (Epic 1989).
Faddis is known as one of the most innovative and inspiring jazz trumpeters of our time. He has an unfailing commitment to the education of young musicians and frequently conducts clinics and master classes worldwide to help the next generation of jazz musicians. Faddis is a full-time faculty member at the Conservatory of Music, Purchase College-SUNY, where he began in 1999 as Artist-in-Residence, becoming shortly thereafter a full Professor and Director of Jazz Performance. Among other accolades and awards, Faddis holds an honorary doctorate in Jazz from Manhattan School of Music (which he attended for about a semester when he was 18), where he also teaches. Whatever the context – classroom or concert hall – and whatever the style, Jon Faddis epitomizes the best in Jazz.
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DONALD HARRISON -- New Orleans-born saxophonist Donald Harrison is a musician/composer considered by his musical peers to be a master of every era of jazz, soul, funk, and a composer of orchestral classical music. He is also a genius, according to geniuses like Eddie Palmieri and Mike Clark. In the HBO drama series Tremé, Emmy-winning director David Simon created two characters to portray how Harrison innovated new styles of music. Beyond serving as an inspiration for the show, Harrison has appeared as an actor/musician in nine episodes of Tremé, as well as in Oscar-winning director Jonathan Demme’s film Rachel Getting Married, Spike Lee’s New Orleans documentary When The Levees Broke, and also performed his song “Dat’s Jazz” in the TV series Marvel’s Luke Cage. This talented artist is the recognized Big Chief of Congo Square in Afro-New Orleans culture and was made a Chief in 2019 by Queen Diambi Kabatusuila in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Africa.
Harrison honed his experience playing with Roy Haynes, Art Blakey, Eddie Palmieri, Dr. John, Lena Horne, McCoy Tyner, Dr. Eddie Henderson, Miles Davis, Ron Carter, Billy Cobham, Chuck Loeb, Dr. Lonnie Smith, Digable Planets, Guru’s Jazzmatazz, The Headhunters, The Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and The Notorious B.I.G. He has performed with over 200 jazz masters and created three influential styles of jazz. At the age of nineteen, Harrison created a modern jazz take on the New Orleans second-line tradition and introduced his composition “New York Second-Line” to the jazz world in 1979. By the mid’80s, he created Nouveau Swing, a distinctive sound that blended the swing beat of modern jazz with hip-hop, funk, and soul music. In the ’90s, Harrison recorded hits in the smooth jazz genre. He began exploring music through the lens of quantum physics in 2000. With quantum jazz, Harrison heard how to move music from a two-dimensional state into a four-dimensional state. Harrison has also served as a mentor to artists as diverse as The Notorious B.I.G, Jon Batiste, Christian Scott, Trombone Shorty, and Esperanza Spalding.
Most recently Harrison has been performing Charlie Parker with strings in tribute to his centennial. He is composing orchestral classical music for upcoming premieres and adding hip-hop/jazz to his multi-genre recordings and performances.
DAYMÉ AROCENA is an award-winning Afro-Cuban jazz singer, who has been described as Cuba’s “finest young female singer.” She is a strong believer in Santeria, an Afro-Cuban religion based on Yoruba principles. To mark her faith and practices, she frequently performs wearing a turban, dressed in white and barefoot. Arocena draws inspiration from the intertwining musical legacies of her native Cuba. A singer, composer and choir director, she’s a bright-shining performer carrying the flame for a new generation of Cuban musicians. Born and raised in Havana, her musical training at the conservatory Amadeo Roldan was combined with an upbringing grounded in Cuba’s own musical foundations.
In 2014, François Renié, Director of Havana Cultura initiative -- a platform for contemporary Cuban creativity driven by Havana Club rum -- was struck by seeing one of her performances. Havana Cultura Mix: The Soundclash! album saw the beginning of her work
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with Gilles and the Havana Cultura platform. An introduction to working with electronic producers for the first time, it was followed by her debut LP Nueva Era in 2015, which made NPR’s list of 50 favorite albums of 2015. She also accompanied Gilles in his journey through rumba culture for the expansive Havana Club Rumba Sessions project, which produced a feature-length documentary along with an album using her distinctive vocals and unique scat style of rumba.
An EP of cover versions, titled One Takes, was also released in early 2016. Cubafonía (2017) could be considered her first “proper” album. Given free rein to work with her choice of Cuba’s best musicians, she makes her first big statement as an artist. It’s witness to her interconnected vision of Cuban music: drawing inspiration from the Caribbean island’s different rhythms and styles. Sonocardiogram (2019), backed once again by a killer band of fellow Cuban musicians, is Daymé’s rawest, jazziest and most arresting outing to date.
In 2021 she became the youngest Latin-American musician invited to complete the prestigious “Signature Artist” program at Berklee College of Music. This exclusive artist program, where Berklee students study the music of an artist that has made a big impact in their musical development, has been completed by Latin legends like Juan Luis Guerra, Alejandro Sanz, Chucho Valdes, Paquito D’Rivera and Gloria Estefan.
In addition to having toured over 25 countries all over the world as a solo artist, she has also shone in venues and events such as WOMAD, Glastonbury Festival, Playboy Jazz Fest, and Blue Note Tokyo. She performed at the Preservation Hall Gala hosted by SFJazz with Ellis Marsalis, Chucho Valdes, Terrence Blanchard, Christian Scott, Airto Moreira, and others. She has been invited to feature with global icons including Pedrito Martinez, Roberto Fonseca, Omara Portuondo and Carlos Varela. Daymé is currently working on her next album with the multi-GRAMMY-winning Boricuan producer Eduardo Cabra.
ADAM O’FARRILL has emerged as a “rising star as a player and composer” (Popmatters) and “a blazing young trumpet talent” (The New York Times). Coming from a rich musical lineage, Adam’s grandfather was the boundary-pushing Cuban composer and arranger, Chico O’Farrill; his father is the composer, pianist, and activist, Arturo O’Farrill; his mother, Alison Deane, is a classical pianist and educator; and his brother, Zack O’Farrill, is a drummer and composer, who also performs in Adam’s band, Stranger Days. Further shaped by growing up in the rich and diverse musical community of New York City, Adam has cemented himself as one of the most in-demand trumpet players in the city, as well as internationally. He has collaborated and performed with the likes of Mary Halvorson, Rudresh Mahanthappa, Samora Pinderhughes, Anna Webber, Mulatu Astatke, Stimmerman, Kambui Olujmi, and Roy Nathanson.
O’Farrill’s music is both abstract and personal, featuring compositions that reflect subjects such as being of mixed race, growing up in New York, family history, and spirituality. He is the leader in the quartet Stranger Days featuring Xavier Del Castillo, Walter Stinson, and Zack O’Farrill. Their most recent album, Visions of Your Other, was released on Biophilia Records in November 2021, and was called “O’Farrill’s most melodically engaging effort yet”, by The New York Times. The album primarily features Adam’s original compositions, as well as an arrangement of a piece by Ryuichi Sakamoto, and a piece by Stinson. One of
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the album’s tracks, “Blackening Skies”, was set to animation by Elenor Kopka (Adult Swim, MTV). Visions of Your Other was named one of the best jazz albums of 2021 by The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and Popmatters, and was awarded the Preis Der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik in January 2022. In the summer of 2022, Adam performed and recorded a new book of octet music, called For These Streets, loosely inspired by the literature and music of the 1930s. The album features Mary Halvorson, Patricia Brennan, Tyrone Allen, Tomas Fujiwara, David Leon, Kalun Leung, Kevin Sun, and Eli Greenhoe.
O’Farrill has received awards and recognition for both his trumpet playing and composition. In both 2019 and 2021, he won the DownBeat Critics Poll for Best Rising Star Trumpeter. Adam has also received commissions and grants from organizations such as The Shifting Foundation, South Arts, Roulette, The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Metropolis Ensemble, The Jazz Gallery, as well as winning the ASCAP Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composer Award. In 2014, O’Farrill won 3rd place in the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz International Trumpet Competition.
Adam holds a B.M. in Jazz Performance from the Manhattan School of Music. During his time there, he studied composition with Reiko Füting, and trumpet with Laurie Frink, Thomas Smith, and Cecil Bridgewater. Previous to college, O’Farrill’s teachers included Jim Seeley, Nathan Warner, Ambrose Akinmusire, and he attended the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School for Music and Art and Performing Arts in Manhattan. www.adam-ofarrill.com
ZACK O’FARRILL is a multi-racial, multi-cultural, multi-musical artist who doesn’t believe in the walls that separate us. Growing up in a musical household, the son of classical pianist Alison Deane and jazz pianist, composer, and bandleader Arturo O’Farrill, Zack and his brother, the trumpeter Adam O’Farrill, grew up playing and listening to a wide world of music. From the European concert music-influenced Afro-Cuban big band jazz of his grandfather, Chico O’Farrill, to the tongue-in-cheek free jazz of Carla Bley, to having a rotation of the Beatles, Steely Dan, Earth Wind and Fire, and Oscar Peterson in the car on summer road trips, growing up in the hip-hop generation, and extensive study of music in the new world derived from the African Diaspora, Zack has never viewed music with any particular regard to genre.
JACQUELENE ACEVEDO is an exciting multi-percussionist known for her musicality, sensitivity, power and passion. She was awarded a Latin GRAMMY in 2017 for her genre-bending work with the NYC-based group Flor de Toloache adding percussion and funk to Mariachi music. She is featured in Spike Lee’s 2020 Emmy-nominated film adaptation of David Byrne’s American Utopia. She is a 2021 TONY Award recipient for the critically-acclaimed Broadway show of the same name. She performed with David Byrne on stage, acting, dancing, and singing in addition to playing multiple percussion instruments until the show ended its run on April 2022.
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Jacquelene has performed on Saturday Night Live, The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon, The View, and on PBS and has opened for artists including Lauryn Hill, Patti Smith, & Stanley Clarke.
Her musical training started early in the dance studios at Alvin Ailey American Dance Center, New York School of Classical Dance, and Ballet Hispanico. Years of studying a variety of dance styles served to expand her musical reach. Growing up under the mentorship of her father, drummer/percussionist Memo Acevedo, her style encompasses music from Brazilian and Cuban to pop, disco, and funk.
She tours regularly throughout Europe and the U.S.. From Beijing, China to the Yukon, Canada, her tasteful choices have made room for her on some of the most recognized stages: Blue Note, Birdland, The Apollo, Lincoln Center, Radio City Music Hall, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola, Joe’s Pub, National Sawdust, Rockwood Music Hall, Toronto Jazz Festival, and Festival International de Jazz de Montreal, and at jazz clubs throughout Europe. Jacquelene loves traveling, recording, and performing live. Her unique showmanship, beloved by audiences and bandleaders alike, continues to open up a wide world of stages.
MELVIS SANTA is a GRAMMY-nominated singer, creative pianist, composer, percussionist and activist. She is a young musical guru, a multi-disciplinary artist who has made a point of integrating the Black diaspora with her Cuban heritage, Afro Cuban traditions and American jazz since her arrival in New York City.
Born and raised in Havana, Cuba, Melvis came to performance at an early age. Classically trained on piano and voice, she made a splash at age 14 by founding the all-female collective and JoJazz Prize-winning ensemble Sexto Sentido, deemed by Chucho Valdés “the best Cuban vocal quartet of the past 30 years.”
Currently based in New York, Melvis continues to make a mark as a performer and educator, adding to the Afro-Cuban jazz movement set forth by her ancestors. She received the BKCM’s Jazz Leaders Fellowship Award. The New York Times defined her style as possessing 70s soul underpinnings, yet belonging to the Afro Cuban musical traditions.
Melvis has guest-lectured at NYU and Fordham University and conducted artist-in-residence programs at Philadelphia’s UArts, Tulane University in New Orleans, Boulder University and with the Chicago Jazz Philharmonic, as well as in Europe, Australia and Latin America. Her work as a bandleader is featured in a number of ensembles: Ashedi (Afro-Cuban traditions), Ellas-Son (all-female Latin jazz music), La Rumba de Santa (Cuban rumba), and most recently, Jazz Orishas, a multi-dimensional ensemble featuring her original compositions. Her bands have showcased in iconic New York venues including Birdland, Minton’s, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Zinc Bar, The Jazz Gallery, The National Jazz Museum in Harlem, and BRIC Jazz Festival.
She has collaborated with Kenny Garrett, Charles Tolliver, Andy Bey, Ravi Coltrane, Steve Coleman, Arturo O’Farrill & the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra, Chucho Valdés, Mayra Caridad Valdés, Xiomara Laugart, David Virelles, Roman Diaz, Pedrito Martinez, Brooklyn Raga Massive, Gilles Peterson, Buena Vista Social Club, Rumberos de Cuba, and Los Muñequitos de Matanzas.
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AFRO LATIN JAZZ ALLIANCE (ALJA)
The Afro Latin Jazz Alliance produces performances, educates about, and preserves the music of all the Americas, emanating from African and indigenous roots, through the entry point of jazz. ALJA embraces its mission with a commitment to social justice, equity, inclusion, and equality of all cultures.
ALJA is honored to be a part of the Timbale Terrace project coming to the East Harlem community in 2027.
THE CHICO O’FARRILL CENTENNIAL
“October 28, 2021 marked the centennial of Arturo “Chico” O’Farrill. As a composer he showed us the greatest lesson possible. The Afro Cuban Jazz Suite is an example of taking an artistic chance, putting it all on the line just as he was starting out in his career. In the time when he wrote his masterpiece, the state of the art in jazz was Charlie Parker, the discovery of Cuba was the only acknowledgment of Latin influence in jazz and only Duke Ellington was writing extended multimovement suites with any success. Somehow Chico connected Europe, Africa, Cuba, and the Americas and single-handedly changed the face of modern music.”
- Arturo O’Farrill
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