Born in Mexico City, 4-time Grammy Award winner Antonio Sánchez began to play the drums at age five and performed professionally as a teen in Mexico’s Latin, jazz and rock scenes—when he wasn’t participating as a member on Mexico’s Junior National Gymnastics Team. He later pursued a degree in classical piano at the National Conservatory in Mexico and in 1993 enrolled in Berklee College of Music and New England Conservatory, where he graduated magna cum laude in Jazz Studies.
Following nine albums and 18 years as one of the most cherished of Pat Metheny’s collaborators, Sánchez has also recorded and performed with Gary Burton, Michael Brecker, Charlie Haden and Chick Corea. In 2014 Sánchez’s popularity soared when he scored Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman which ended up garnering four Academy Awards (including Best Picture).
Today, Sánchez is among the most sought-after jazz drummers in the world and has been Modern Drummer’s “Jazz Drummer of the Year” on multiple occasions. His new album SHIFT – Bad Hombre Vol. II, featuring Dave Mathews, Trent Reznor and a host of other guest artists, will be released on Warner Bros this August.
Alfredo Rodríguez is a GRAMMY-nominated pianist, composer, arranger, and producer. After meeting Quincy Jones at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 2006 and receiving an offer to work together, Alfredo emigrated to the US to pursue his dream of being an internationally acclaimed musician. Over the past decade, Alfredo has gone from a local Cuban artist to a globally recognized GRAMMY nominee with five critically acclaimed releases on tastemaker imprint Mack Avenue Records: Sounds of Space (2011), The Invasion Parade (2014), Tocororo (2016), The Little Dream (2018), and Duologue (2019) with percussionist Pedrito Martinez.
Beyond his accomplishments, Rodriguez’s ability to “play stories” on the keys allows him to connect with his listeners on a deeply personal level. His albums, including The Invasion Parade, Tocororo, and Duologue, reflect his memories of Cuba, his experiences as an immigrant, and his journey of self-discovery through music. He’s been featured by All Things Considered, Downbeat, the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Wall Street Journal among many others, and performed for NPR Music’s Tiny Desk Concert.
Rodriguez continues to share his music along with his impactful message of perseverance and cross culturalization on an international tour, while sharing a variety of viral social media videos in which he plays well-known compositions in a Cuban timba style.
Celebrate Mardi Gras with Delfeayo Marsalis and the Uptown Jazz Orchestra as they stretch the boundaries of what is expected from big bands, offering up an extraordinary sense of joy and fun that could only come from New Orleans. The acclaimed trombonist, composer, and producer, Delfeayo Marsalis leads the vibrant Uptown Jazz Orchestra in a performance that crystalizes the stories, sounds, and rhythms of NOLA.
Born in New York City to parents of Cuban and Jamaican descent and raised in the Brooklyn neighborhood of East New York, Aja Monet Bacquie began writing poems when she was eight or nine years old. While attending Baruch College Campus High School, she performed spoken-word for school talent shows. Around this time, Monet joined Urban Word NYC—a non-profit organization that offers guidance and public platforms to young writers, particularly those of color—and became a part of a community of aspiring urban writers.
Aja Monet’s lyrical poems explore gender, race, migration and spirituality. In 2018, her first full collection of poetry, My Mother Was a Freedom Fighter, was nominated for an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work. She read the title poem at the national Women’s March on Washington DC in 2017 to commemorate women of the Diaspora. In 2019, she was awarded the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Award for Poetry for her cultural organizing work in South Florida. She has collaborated with poet and musician Saul Williams on the book Chorus, an anthem of a new generation of poets and won the legendary Nuyorican Poets Cafe Grand Slam poetry award title in 2007.
“Guitarist Marc Ribot’s wildest project doesn’t mess around. The guitar legend, with bassist Shahzad Ismaily, and drummer Ches Smith, merges funk backbeats with the taut chaos of Sonic Youth and flashes of Woodstock Santana.”—New York Magazine
On the band’s 5th studio release, Connection, Marc Ribot’s Ceramic Dog have pushed their long-brewing tension between traditional pop song craft and avant garde improvisational music to the breaking point, bridging their customary genre-agnostic approach with elements of glam boogie, minimalist disco, psychedelic boogaloo, garage-punk-against-the-machine agitprop, and so much more. From the anthemic manifesto “Soldiers in the Army of Love” to the unhinged ranting of “Heart Attack” and indescribable “No Name,” Ceramic Dog unleash a fury of complex time signatures, blues abstraction, and free-blowing energy to create their most unapologetically audacious collection thus far, their one-of-a-kind daring evidenced by the unlikely cover of Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz’s “That’s Entertainment,” written especially for the 1953 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer musical film The Band Wagon but here, in Ribot and Co’s hands, deconstructs Hollywood cliches while simultaneously winking at both the post-punk and post-Cultural Revolution iterations of the Gang of Four. Fueled by what Ribot calls “several bolts of creative lightning,” Connections stands as a vibrant, odd, and in many ways definitive milestone in what is truly a singular creative journey for Marc Ribot and Ceramic Dog, its zeitgeist-busting sound and vision not only affirming their place in the musical universe but raising the stakes for whatever comes next.
Their performance at ArtPower is a record release show for their new album, Connection.
A mainstay of the New York City scene with admirers worldwide, Ehud Asherie brings many selves to the piano bench: the dazzling jazz improviser with an astonishing range from ragtime to the present and future; the composer of surprising melodies; the living embodiment of Brazilian piano music with a special love for Ernesto Nazareth.
Pianist and provocateur Connie Han has created an edgy blend of modern and traditional jazz with her incendiary Mack Avenue Records debut CRIME ZONE. At 26, this young lioness is on a fast-climbing trajectory to jazz stardom with rave reviews from the New York Times, Jazziz magazine, Downbeat magazine, and more. The New York Times describes her as “the rare musician with fearsome technical chops, a breadth of historical knowledge and enough originality to write tunes that absorb your ear easily.” Weaving in and out of the
tradition, Han pays tribute to McCoy Tyner, Mulgrew Miller, and Kenny Kirkland with her own unique edge and fire at the piano.
Bending the future of sound, taking ivory and ebony to destinations unknown, is keyboard maestro, vocalist, composer, producer, arranger and astral traveler Brandon Coleman. A regular fixture with Babyface, Donald Glover, Flying Lotus, and Kamasi Washington’s band, Coleman represents a new chapter in the evolution of jazz and funk fusion.
Coleman’s latest electronic funk odyssey, Interstellar Black Space, launched in May 2022. He explains, “I wanted to write some music that reflected how I felt about time, space, and celestial energy. I love space movies like Interstellar and The Martian—and I thought to myself, if I was traveling through space what would I want to hear? I wanted to create some astral Negro music.”
One of the finest trumpeters in jazz today, Marquis Hill is also a composer and bandleader whose comprehensive vision highlights the unity and continuity within the musical heritage of African Americans. On acclaimed albums like his latest, Modern Flows Vol. II, and his 2016 breakout project, The Way We Play, Hill and his working band, the Blacktet, use their next-level musicianship and deeply interactive dynamic to break down the barriers separating bop, hip-hop, R&B, and electronic music. At ArtPower, Hill performs from his latest album, a live reinterpretation of his 2012 debut album New Gospel.
Winner of the Montreux Jazz Festival Vocal Competition and a finalist in the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Vocal Competition, Cyrille Aimée is a riveting performer of new world jazz. She is all about finding herself in each and every moment! Aimée returns to ArtPower to perform new, original songs and music from her roots around the world, always with a focus on groove. In three different languages and with an international band who met in New Orleans, this show is sure to make your heart dance!
