Search Results for: Fernando Gonzalez

Jazz With An Accent: A Conversation with Sammy Figueroa

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By Fernando Gonzalez Miami, Florida        Puerto Rican percussionist Sammy Figueroa is a versatile, resourceful player whose extraordinary career includes performing, recording and touring with a dizzying list of jazz, pop and rock stars and groups, including trumpeter Miles Davis, saxophonist Sonny Rollins (his current employer) and the Brecker Brothers but also David Bowie, David Lee… Read More Jazz With An Accent: A Conversation with Sammy Figueroa

Jazz With An Accent: Drummin’ Back Out Into the World — CDs by Arturo O’Farrill and Ginger Baker

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By Fernando Gonzalez Arturo O’Farrill & The Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra The Offense of the Drum (Motema) Maestro Mario Bauzá — trumpeter, saxophonist and music director of Machito and His Afro- Cubans, direct link between Dizzy Gillespie and Chano Pozo and a key figure in blending jazz and Afro-Cuban rhythms — scoffed at the label Latin… Read More Jazz With An Accent: Drummin’ Back Out Into the World — CDs by Arturo O’Farrill and Ginger Baker

Jazz (and beyond) With An Accent: A Bad Moon Rising for The Final

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By Fernando Gonzalez After a month of a World Cup, many Americans have come to learn some of the, umm, peculiarities of fútbol (soccer if you must), including its rituals both in the pitch and the stands. Yes, Virginia, in places such as Argentina and Germany, who meet in the final, fútbol is a religion.… Read More Jazz (and beyond) With An Accent: A Bad Moon Rising for The Final

Jazz With An Accent: CDs by The Dino Saluzzi Group, Carlos Franzetti and Ruben Blades

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By Fernando Gonzalez The Dino Saluzzi Group El Valle de la Infancia (ECM) The bandoneón, a button squeezebox, might have been born in Germany as a poor man’s harmonium for religious services, but found its calling, and reached global recognition, in tango, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, half a world away. But bandoneonist Dino Saluzzi was… Read More Jazz With An Accent: CDs by The Dino Saluzzi Group, Carlos Franzetti and Ruben Blades

Jazz With an Accent: The Preservation Hall Jazz Band; Horacio “Chivo” Borraro; Guerrilla Flamenco

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By Fernando Gonzalez  The Joy of Jazz If their  recent show in Coral Gables, Florida, was any indication, and you love jazz, you need to hear the Preservation Hall Jazz Band live. You might dismiss it, as I once did, as just a repertory band, a sort of charming, rolling live museum act evoking what might-have-been.… Read More Jazz With an Accent: The Preservation Hall Jazz Band; Horacio “Chivo” Borraro; Guerrilla Flamenco

Jazz with an Accent: New CDs from e.s.t., Tania Maria and Eddie Gomez, Alfredo Rodriguez, Diego Schissi, and Christian Escoude

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By Fernando Gonzalez The music business might be not much of a business these days, but the quantity, variety and quality of the music being released is quite astonishing. No, not every recording is great or even merely necessary. Few would argue against democratizing the production and delivery process in music – but on the… Read More Jazz with an Accent: New CDs from e.s.t., Tania Maria and Eddie Gomez, Alfredo Rodriguez, Diego Schissi, and Christian Escoude

Live Music: Wynton Marsalis and The Jazz At Lincoln Center Orchestra in a Jazz Roots Series performance at Knight Concert Hall in the Adrienne Arsht Center.

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By Fernando Gonzalez Miami, Florida.  Can we have Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra in some juke joint or hole-in-the-wall neighborhood jazz club just once? Just for the fun of it. It will probably never happen – economics wouldn’t allow that, for starters. But listening to, and watching, Marsalis and the JLCO… Read More Live Music: Wynton Marsalis and The Jazz At Lincoln Center Orchestra in a Jazz Roots Series performance at Knight Concert Hall in the Adrienne Arsht Center.

Live Music: Larry Harlow’s “La Raza Latina: A Salsa Suite,” at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts

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Salsa Goes to the Concert Hall By Fernando Gonzalez Miami.  Pianist, songwriter, arranger and producer Larry Harlow not only helped define salsa and mastermind many of its hits; he also created some of the genre’s most ambitious pieces. But in music, great artistic ambition carries a price. Harlow’s La Raza Latina: A Salsa Suite, is… Read More Live Music: Larry Harlow’s “La Raza Latina: A Salsa Suite,” at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts