For Arturo O’Farrill, it’s all that jazz, and so much more
His Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra may have received Grammy nominations for each of its three albums, but Arturo O’Farrill says the ensemble is not just about the music.
“It’s about culture,” O’Farrill said. “It’s about a culture in a city that is emblematic of a larger picture. It’s culture that really exists throughout America.
“The music we play is American. It’s not Latin jazz. It’s American in the best sense, because it represents the greatest integration of all the good things, the really powerful things, that unite us as a people.”
That said, O’Farrill, son of the late and legendary drummer Chico O’Farrill, warns that as artistic director, his ALJO is not about feeding audiences the same old tunes.
“We’re doing some of the best, most interesting, cutting edge programming in Afro Latin big band jazz that there is,” he said. “We’re doing things with this music that people only thought of.
“I’ve uncovered a huge and terrifying direction that jazz could take. It’s brand new and completely unbelievable. It’s like what they say; Be careful what you ask for because there so much music to be made that is so wonderful and amazing and that really challenges everything we think jazz and Latin jazz is.”
You can judge for yourself next weekend as ALJO celebrates its 10th anniversary with two days of performances at Symphony Space, 2537 Broadway at 95th St.
The Friday, Jan. 20 benefit concert will honor founding ALJO board chairman Ray Santos and jazz pianist Randy Weston.
“Ray Santos is one of my personal heroes,” O’Farrill said. “I model my life on people like him.”
The show starts at 8 p.m. Tickets are $100, $80 and $60.
The Saturday, Jan. 21 show will “bring back the best moments of the past 10 years with some of my favorite performers,” O’Farrill said. “We are literally recreating moments that left people speechless” with performances by Dafnis Prieto, Claudia Acuña, Donald Harrison, Edmar Castaneda, and Fernando Otero.
Tickets are $50, $40, and $30, with $15 and $5 student tickets, though O’Farrill said: “Anybody who understands me and the culture I love understands that this music is sustenance. We won’t turn anyone away.”
Tickets for both days are available at the Symphony Space box office and website www.symphonyspace.org, and at the ALJO website, www.afrolatinjazz.org.
Though his initial ambition was to play piano in jazz legend Miles Davis’s band “because Miles Davis was the greatest musician in jazz history,” O’Farrill said he found himself assuming a leadership role in his father’s business as the elder O’Farrill “started getting older and feebler. He had opportunities handed to him he could not handle, so I started taking over for him.”
The ALJO started under the auspices of Jazz@Lincoln Center but branched out on its own five years ago and has since founded several entities — including the Afro Latin Jazz Foundation, the Afro Latin Jazz Alliance, and the Afro Latin Jazz Academy of Music — to manage fundraising, educational and other endeavors.
O’Farrill, whose wife and two sons are all musicians, said ALJO is dedicated to exploring a uniquely American art form.
“When I say American I mean Pan American,” he said. “There is some form of jazz in Peru, in Colombia, in Argentina, in Uruguay. There is some form of jazz in every corner of the Americas, and it’s not necessarily a form of American jazz. It’s a form they have created and a form of improvisational music they have labeled as jazz which I think reflects their indigenous culture.
ALJO’s music, he said, ““is accessible to connoisseurs of classical music or to people who just want to dance. It an incredibly broad spectrum that we do.”
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/arturo-o-farrill-jazz-article-1.1006419#ixzz1jgtJuNRA
