Jazz Articles about Bobby Sanabria

Bobby Sanabria: Kenya Revisited LIVE!!! (feat. Candido)

by Graham L. Flanagan
January 10, 2010

Led by percussionist Bobby Sanabria, the Manhattan School of Music Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra delivers a worthy tribute to one of the greatest AfroCuban jazz recordings ever made: Machito's Kenya. Recorded in 1957, Kenya exists for many as one of the essential albums of its kind. It's absolutely appropriate that, more than half a century later, someone should honor its legacy with a live performance. The Afro-Cuban Orchestra proves to be worthy of tackling such a massive endeavor. ...

Bobby Sanabria / Manhattan School of Music Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra: Kenya Revisited Live!!!

by Alain Londes
August 5, 2009

2009 is a key year in Latin music education and rediscovery. Kenya Revisited Live!!! is the culmination of Bobby Sanabria's effort to recreate Machito & The Afro-Cubans' defining 1957 masterpiece, Kenya: Afro-Cuban Jazz (Roulette), under the direction of Mario Bauzá. It's a real bridge between Afro-Cuban music and jazz, featuring the Manhattan School of Music Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra with special guest/NEA jazz master Cándido Camero on congas for three tunes. The show starts off with “Frenzy," a ...

Bobby Sanabria / Manhattan School of Music Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra: Kenya Revisited Live!!!

by Edward Blanco
May 9, 2009

In 1957, Cuban band leader, singer and composer Francisco Raul Gutierrez Grillo de Ayala, AKA “Machito," his Afro-Cuban big band, along with co-founder Mario Bauza, Cannonball Adderley and Basie trumpeter Joe Newman, released an album titled Kenya (Roulette), which, at the time, became instrumental in launching the Afro-Cuban or Latin jazz genre. Multiple Grammy nominee Bobby Sanabria pays homage to Machito, Bauza and their ground-breaking album directing the Manhattan School of Music Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra in a live concert recording ...

Bobby Sanabria / Manhattan School of Music Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra: Kenya Revisited Live !!!

by Woodrow Wilkins
May 7, 2009

A full horn section combined with an ensemble of percussionists usually means one thing: Afro-Cuban jazz. Conductor Bobby Sanabria and the Manhattan School of Music's Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra capture the essence of this style of music by paying tribute to a landmark recording.Kenya Revisited Live!!!, originally recorded in 1957 by Machito and his Afro-Cubans, featuring Cannonball Adderley, is widely hailed as a first- rate assembly of this style of music. With updated music and new arrangements the orchestra ...

Bobby Sanabria: Afro-Cuban Storyteller

by Jason Crane
March 24, 2008

Bobby Sanabria is a living museum of Afro-Cuban music. Sanabria is a percussionist, drummer and educator who is at the forefront of Afro-Cuban music—particularly the frontier where it intersects with jazz. In 2007, Sanabria released Big Band Urban Folktales (Jazzheads, 2007), an album he says takes the music “beyond the 21st century." Jason Crane, AAJ contributor and host of The Jazz Session, sat down with Sanabria in May 2007 to talk about the history of Afro-Cuban music, Sanabria's own career, ...

Bobby Sanabria: Big Band Urban Folktales

by Martin Longley
March 17, 2008

Born in the Bronx and hailing from a Puerto Rican background, percussionist Bobby Sanabria has mastered every conceivable form of AfroLatin music, from New York salsa to Cuban son and even down to Brazilian samba. This album comes across as a demonstration record for everything that he and his thrilling big band can accomplish. Illuminating though they are, it might be best to lay off reading Dr. Robert Farris Thompson's booklet notes until after a few spins ...

Bobby Sanabria: Big Band Urban Folktales

by Michael P. Gladstone
October 16, 2007

In the wake of the disappearance of many of the Afro-Cubanjazz big bands of the late twentieth century like Dizzy Gillespie, Mongo Santamaria, Chico O'Farrill, Tito Puente and Mario Bauza, drummer/percussionist Bobby Sanabria heads up a twenty-piece band that fills that gap quite nicely.

A native New Yorker, Sanabria graduated from the Berklee College of Music in 1979 and worked with many members of the aforementioned orchestras. Big Band Urban Folktales is appropriately titled. Sanabria tries to corral, ...