Executive & Artistic Director

Thor Steingraber

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Arturo O’Farrill Trio

Thu Feb 5 | 8PM

Run time: approximately 1 hour and 50 minutes, including a 20-minute intermission ________ Program | Program Note

Musicians

Arturo O’Farrill | Raul Reyes Bueno | Zack O’Farrill

Jazz Club Concessions & Bar Menu

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The Soraya

Our Supporters | The Soraya Team

Arturo O’Farrill

Pianist, composer, and educator Arturo O’Farrill was born in Mexico and grew up in New York City. O’Farrill’s professional career began with the Carla Bley Band, and he continued as a solo performer with a wide spectrum of artists including Dizzy Gillespie, Lester Bowie, Wynton Marsalis, and Harry Belafonte.   In 2007, O’Farrill founded the Afro Latin Jazz Alliance as a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the performance, education, and preservation of Afro-Latin music.    In December 2010, O’Farrill traveled with the original Chico O’Farrill Afro Cuban Jazz Orchestra to Cuba, returning his father’s musicians to his homeland. He continues to travel to Cuba regularly as an informal cultural ambassador, working with Cuban musicians, dancers, and students, and bringing local musicians from Cuba to the United States and American musicians to Cuba.   Arturo has performed with orchestras and bands including his own Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra and Arturo O’Farrill Sextet, as well as other orchestras and intimate ensembles in the U.S., Europe, Russia, Australia, and South America.   An avid supporter of all the arts, Arturo has performed with Ballet Hispánico and the Malpaso Dance Company, for whom he has written three ballets. In addition, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater has in its repertoire a ballet entitled Open Door, choreographed by Ronald K. Brown, featuring several of Arturo’s compositions and recordings. Brown’s own Evidence A Dance Company commissioned Arturo to compose New Conversations, which premiered in 2018 at Jacob’s Pillow in Becket, Massachusetts.   Arturo has received commissions from Meet the Composer, Jazz at Lincoln Center, The Philadelphia Music Project, The Apollo Theater, Symphony Space, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, the Young People’s Chorus of New York City, Columbia University, and the New York State Council on the Arts.   Arturo’s well-reviewed and highly praised “Afro-Latin Jazz Suite” from the album CUBA: The Conversation Continues (Motéma) won the 2016 GRAMMY® Award for Best Instrumental Composition and the 2016 Latin GRAMMY Award for Best Latin Jazz Album. His powerful “Three Revolutions” from the album Familia: Tribute to Bebo & Chico was the 2018 GRAMMY Award winner (his sixth) for Best Instrumental Composition. Arturo’s album Four Questions (ZOHO) is the first to embody all original compositions, including the title track, which features the brilliant orator Dr. Cornel West. This album won a GRAMMY in 2021.   Arturo was Artist in Residence for The Greene Space in New York City, for which he created a four-concert series, “Radical Acts and Musical Deviancy,” including a newly commissioned composition.    In 2020, Arturo’s weekly concerts with the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra, dubbed “Virtual Birdland,” topped the list of 10 Best Quarantine Concerts Online in The New York Times.   Arturo is a former professor of global jazz studies and an associate dean for equity, diversity and inclusion at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has been honored as a Steinway Artist for many years and is now a Blue Note Records recording artist.

Raul Reyes Bueno

Seeking a new direction for his music career, Cuban-born bassist and composer Raul Reyes Bueno moved to the United States in 2010. He has been described as a bassist with “advanced sense of rhythm, beautiful sound, time, and solos.” Reyes’ versatility in traditional jazz and contemporary jazz trends, along with his cheerful charisma, has earned him opportunities to work with jazz artists such as Geoffrey Keezer, Arturo O’Farrill, Victor Lewis, Tia Fuller, Joe Magnarelli, Rodney Green, and Nick Finzer, among many others.  Reyes holds a bachelor’s degree in bass performance from the University of Central Oklahoma and a master’s degree in jazz performance from the University of North Texas. While at UNT, he became a member of the GRAMMY-nominated One O’Clock Lab Band, appearing on their album The Rhythm of the Road. Reyes also found opportunities to perform with luminaries including Jimmy Heath, John Beasley, Doc Severinsen, and Billy Hart.  In 2021, Reyes moved to New York City to study at The Juilliard School, where he was mentored by jazz masters Kenny Washington, Ben Wolfe, and Gerald Cannon. Since then, Reyes can be seen often performing at premiere jazz clubs, such as Birdland, Dizzy’s, Smalls Jazz Club, Mezzrow, and Blue Note.  Reyes has also toured and collaborated with renowned Latin artists, such as Maelo Ruiz, The Mambo Legends Orchestra, Tito Puente Jr., Willie Gonzalez, and Mexican singer Carlos Rivera.

Zack O’Farrill

Drummer/percussionist, educator, and big band director Zack O’Farrill performs regularly close to home in Brooklyn, throughout the United States, and across the globe with Adam O’Farrill Stranger Days, Albert Marquès and Freedom First, Kalí Rodríguez-Peña and Mélange, Mali Obomsawin, Dan Lehner's True East, and El Kikirikí Biquéy. Zack also works extensively with his father, Arturo O’Farrill, and has performed on several of his Grammy Award-winning albums. Zack was the community liaison at Belongó (formerly known as the Afro Latin Jazz Alliance) where he worked to connect the organization to its neighborhood of El Barrio and the Latino community at large in the lead up to the construction of their permanent brick-and-mortar arts and community center. With Belongó, he manages the Fat Cats youth ensembles, directing the big band. Along with his wife, Colombian soprano Sasha Gutiérrez Montaño, Zack is a founding member of The Opera Next Door, producing operas in the streets of New York reaching audiences often overlooked by conventional arts programming.