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David Bixler Auction Project featuring Arturo O'Farrill at The Iridium

GRAMMY award winner Arturo O'Farrill joins David Bixler Auction Project in an eclectic mix of jazz, Afro-Cuban, and Irish music. Original material along with funky arrangments of traditional Irish tunes make Auction Project a band that you need to catch live.

DAVID BIXLER

"David Bixler is an artist who manages to take much of the best of the jazz tradition and push it in new directions—push, but never shove. He is original, but his originality is not what I would call radical. He works within the tradition. He is not looking to destroy it. The Nearest Exit May Be Inside Your Head is an album filled with inventive ideas and exciting artistry. Most importantly, it is filled with music you'll want to hear and hear again." Jack Goodstein

Saxophonist, composer, and educator David Bixler continues to establish himself as a multi-faceted artist. David has performed and toured the world with the orchestras of Chico O'Farrill, Lionel Hampton, and Toshiko Akiyoshi, among others. His collaboration with pianist Arturo O'Farrill has resulted in many performances and tours, in addition to several recordings, including the GRAMMY nominated 40 Acres and a Mule.

The Nearest Exit May Be Inside Your Head is Bixler's fifth recording as a leader. In reviewing the recording for All About Jazz, Dan Bilawasky writes, " Bixler has garnered plenty of attention for his contributions to O'Farrill's music over the years, but this album makes it clear that it's time to give him his due for his own winning work."

Also active as a composer, David gave the premier of his Concerto for Alto Saxophone and Orchestra, with the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of Delta David Gier in March of 2010. He has also received numerous commissions one of which, Heptagon for saxophone quartet, is included on a Naxos release of American composers by the Ancia Quartet.

David is the Director of Jazz Studies at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio. As both a Selmer and Vandoren Artist he is active as a clinician throughout the world.

Arturo O'Farrill

Grammy Award winning pianist, composer and educator Arturo O'Farrill — leader of the "first family of Afro-Cuban Jazz" (NY Times) — was born in Mexico and grew up in New York City. Son of the late, great composer Chico O'Farrill, Arturo was Educated at Manhattan School of Music, Brooklyn College Conservatory and the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College. He played piano in Carla Bley's Big Band from 1979 through 1983 and earned a reputation as a soloist in groups led by Dizzy Gillespie, Steve Turre, Freddy Cole, Lester Bowie, Wynton Marsalis and Harry Belafonte. In 2002, he established the GRAMMY winning Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra in order to bring the vital musical traditions of Afro Latin jazz to a wider general audience, and to greatly expand the contemporary Latin jazz big band repertoire through commissions to artists across a wide stylistic and geographic range. A celebrated composer with a frequent new ground-breaking and forward-looking perspective, Mr. O'Farrill has received commissions from Meet the Composer, the Big Apple Circus, the Philadelphia Music Project, Symphony Space, and the Bronx Museum of the Arts. He has also composed music for films, including Hollywoodland and Salud. His debut album with the Orchestra, Una Noche Inolvidable, earned a GRAMMY Award nomination in 2006 and the Orchestra's second album, Song for Chico, (ZOHO) earned a GRAMMY Award for Best Latin Jazz Album in 2009. In February 2011, Mr. O'Farrill and the ALJO released their third GRAMMY nominated album, 40 Acres and a Burro (ZOHO). In 2011, O'Farrill released his first solo album, The Noguchi Sessions, (ZOHO).

David Bixler Auction Project
featuring Arturo O'Farrill
at The Iridium
Tuesday December 1st
8:30PM & 10:30PM

David Bixler: Alto Saxophone
Heather Martin Bixler: Violin
Arturo O'Farrill: Piano
Victor Prieto: Accordian
Carlo De Rosa: Bass
Vince Cherico: Drums and Cymbals



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