Featuring the Juilliard Jazz Orchestra Conducted by Elio Villafranca
NEW YORK –– Juilliard Jazz presents “The Music of Contemporary Afro-Cuban Composers” featuring the Juilliard Jazz Orchestra, conducted by Juilliard Jazz faculty member Elio Villafranca, on Wednesday, January 17, 2018, at 7:30pm in Juilliard’s Peter Jay Sharp Theater. They will be joined by dancer Julia Loiza Gutiérrez-Rivera and percussionists Gabo Lugo and Nicky Lavoy.
Juilliard Jazz Orchestra members are alto saxophonists Immanuel Wilkins and David Milazzo; tenor saxophonists Abdias Armenteros and Gideon Tazelaar; baritone saxophonist Evan Atwell-Harris; trumpeters Jonah Moss, Anthony Hervey, David Adewumi, and Giveton Gelin; trombonists Jeffery Miller, Jacob Melsha, Samuel Chess, and Jasim Perales; guitarist Juan Vidaurre; pianist Andrea Domenici; bassist Felix Moseholm; and drummer Cameron MacIntosh.
Tickets are $30 ($15 for full-time students) and available at juilliard.edu/calendar.
The program features works written by Elio Villafranca: Confradias (arr. Elio Villafranca/Vance Thompson), The Great Debater (arr. Elio Villafranca/Vance Thompson), The Big Plus (arr. Elio Villafranca/Vance Thompson), Caribbean Tinge (arr. Vance Thompson), Two in One (Elio Villafranca), Mambo Vivo (Elio Villafranca), La Burla de Los Congos (Elio Villafranca), and Last Trains to Paris (Elio Villafranca/arr. Keith Brown).
About Elio Villafranca
Pianist and composer Elio Villafranca was born in the Pinar del Río province of Cuba and is a Steinway Artist, and the 2014 Jazz at Lincoln Center (JALC) Millennium Swing Award recipient. Classically trained in percussion and composition at the Instituto Superior de Arte in Havana, he arrived in the U.S. in mid-1995. Last year, he was among five pianists chosen by Chick Corea to perform at the first Chick Corea Jazz Festival at JALC. His concert Letters to Mother Africa was selected by New York City Jazz Record a one of the top concerts of 2016. He received a 2010 Grammy Award nomination in the best Latin jazz album of the year category. In 2008, Jazz Corner nominated him as pianist of the year. That same year Mr. Villafranca was honored by BMI with the BMI Jazz Guaranty Award and received the first NFA/Heineken Green Ribbon Master Artist Music Grant for the creation of his Concerto for Mariachi. In 2003 his first album, Incantations/Encantaciones (featuring Pat Martino, Terell Stafford, and Dafnis Prieto) was rankedamong the 50 best jazz albums of the year by Jazz Times magazine. Mr. Villafranca’s Caribbean Tinge, received a 2014 Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik nomination and over the years he has recorded and performed nationally and internationally as a leader, featuring jazz master artists including Wynton Marsalis, Pat Martino, Terell Stafford, Billy Hart, Paquito D’Rivera, Eric Alexander, Lewis Nash, David Murray, and Jon Faddis. In 2017 Elio Villafranca appeared on the cover of Inside Jazz magazine and received the Sunshine Award, founded in 1989 to recognize excellence in the performing arts, education, science, and sports of the various Caribbean countries, South America, Central America, and Africa. Based in New York, he is a faculty member at Juilliard, Temple University, and the Manhattan School of Music.