Jazz Articles about Arturo O'Farrill & The Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra

Arturo O'Farrill & The Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra: Mundoagua: Celebrating Carla Bley

by Angelo Leonardi
March 17, 2025

Scoperto da Carla Bley nel 1979, quand'era ancora studente diciannovenne, e rimasto nei suoi gruppi per tre anni, Arturo O'Farrill ne celebra la memoria con quest'album ambizioso, che raccoglie due sue suites ed una ("Blue Palestine") che lui stesso commissionò alla grande autrice e bandleader nel 2019, quattro anni prima della sua morte. “Mundoagua" la composizione che apre il disco è stata scritta per commemorare l'Anno dell'acqua ed ha avuto la sua anteprima al Miller Theater di New ...

Arturo O'Farrill: Mundoagua: Celebrating Carla Bley

by Jack Bowers
February 11, 2025

Mundoagua, the latest album by composer and pianist Arturo O'Farrill's Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra, is subdivided into three suites, the second of which is the four-movement “Blue Palestine," written and arranged by another celebrated composer and pianist, Carla Bley, a leading light in the avant-garde free jazz movement of the mid-twentieth century, who died of cancer in October 2023. The opening suite, “Mundoagua," commissioned by the Columbia University School of the Arts in 2018 to commemorate the ...

Arturo O’Farrill & Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra at Town Hall

by Ernest Barteldes
June 14, 2024

Arturo O' Farrill & Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra With guests Hamilton de Holanda, Yamandu Costa and Cyro Baptista Town Hall New York, NY June 7, 2024 Backed by the 18-piece Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra, pianist Arturo O'Farrill started a celebration of Brazilian music with “Alafia," a Latin-tinged jazz tune before welcoming Cyro Baptista to the stage for a rendition of Hermeto Pascoal's “Bebe," a syncopated, northeastern Brazilian tune that showcased many of his ...

Arturo O'Farrill and the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra: Four Questions

by Jack Bowers
May 25, 2020

The Four Questions addressed by composer / pianist Arturo O'Farrill's Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra on its latest album were first posed in 1903 by W.E.B. DuBois in his book The Souls of Black Folk and are answered herein by the esteemed educator / historian / social activist Dr. Cornel West. For the record, the questions are “what does integrity do in the face of adversity and oppression, what does honesty do in the face of lies and deception, what does ...

Arturo O'Farrill & The Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra: Cuba: The Conversation Continues

by Karl Ackermann
October 16, 2015

“I believe that there is no country in the world including any and all the countries under colonial domination, where economic colonization, humiliation and exploitation were worse than in Cuba...in part owing to my country's policies..." --President John F. Kennedy, October 1963 Revolution and musical genres share the characteristic of having an embryonic state. While the United States and Russia bore witness to the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall and the symbolic end of the Cold War, ...

Arturo O'Farrill & The Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra: The Offense Of The Drum

by Dan Bilawsky
May 28, 2014

The Offense Of The Drum may be the least cohesive record in Arturo O'Farrill's discography, but that's largely by design. Here, O'Farrill firmly adheres to his stated “artistic vision"--"to bend what the world knows as Afro Latin jazz over the acoustic horizon"--better than anywhere else in his discography. Guests galore and a belief in Afro Latin camaraderie help him realize that goal, resulting in the most intriguing and expansive offering that he's ever released. In some ways ...

Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra with Arturo O'Farrill: Una Noche Inolvidable

by Jack Bowers
October 4, 2006

It's never easy to replace a legend, especially when the legend happens also to be one's father. But Arturo O'Farrill, who doesn't want for courage or self-reliance, has seized the reins once held by his illustrious parent, the late Chico O'Farrill, and ridden the thoroughbred Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra into the winner's circle in the first-ever live recording from Jazz at Lincoln Center's state-of-the-art Frederick P. Rose Hall, an occasion that was truly Una Noche Inolvidable (an unforgettable night).

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