Cuban-Born Jazz Pianist, Vocalist And Bandleader Zahili Zamora

Today our musical guest is Cuban-born Afro Latin jazz pianist, vocalist, composer, bandleader, arranger and educator Zahili Gonzalez Zamora. She started playing piano at the age of six and graduated from the National School of Music with a performance degree. Her passion for music has taken her to Canada, Southeast Asia and the United States. Her Afro-Cuban jazz trio, MIXCLA, has headlined at the landmark Scullers Jazz Club in Boston since 2018. MIXCLA has also performed at the 59th Monterey Jazz Festival, the 2016 Stave Sessions as part of the Celebrity Series of Boston, the 2015 Montreal International Jazz Festival and other highly respected venues and festivals.

In 2017, Zahili graduated from Berklee College of Music, summa cum laude, with a dual-degree in Jazz Composition & Jazz Piano Performance. In addition, while still a student at Berklee, she won the 40th Annual Downbeat Magazine Music Award for Outstanding Performance as well as The Duke Ellington and The Wayne Shorter Awards for her outstanding creativity & musicianship.

In 2019, she joined Berklee's Piano Department and she's now an Associate Professor and also teaches the Master's Program.

Ms. Zamora's current release and recording Overcoming explores her extensive inner journeys through the challenges of her very personal apprehensions that might have held her back from stardom—until now—and finally releasing this album—as a vision of her true self.

We will listen to portions of two compositions: "Rumination" and "Negra."