Bobby Sanabria and the Manhattan School of Music Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra pay tribute to the East Harlem

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The Manhattan School of Music Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra conducted by Bobby Sanabria will pay tribute to the birthplace of Afro-Cuban Jazz, East Harlem with the World Premieres of specially commissioned pieces, Let There Be Swing! and ¡Que Viva Harlem! This concert will take place on Thursday, March 28 at 7:30 p.m. in the School's Borden Auditorium.
HARLEM LIVES!/¡QUE VIVA HARLEM!
MSM's year long celebration honoring Harlem's new renaissance continues with the multi-Latin Grammy nominated MSM Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra directed by multi-Grammy nominee Maestro Bobby Sanabria in a program honoring the birthplace of Afro-Cuban Jazz, East Harlem. They will be paying tribute to this legacy with an eclectic program featuring new arrangements of compositions by Mario Bauzá, Duke Ellington, Juan Tizol, Billy Strayhorn and others. In addition this special tribute will feature the World Premieres of two specially commissioned pieces by composers Dr. Eugene Marlow - Let There Be Swing! and Kyle Athayde's multi- movement tour de force celebrating El Barrio's Latino community entitled, ¡Que Viva Harlem!

Harlem is experiencing an artistic renaissance rivaling that of the 1920's and 30's. The Manhattan School of Music is at the vortex of this renaissance celebrating it with a year long series of special concerts. In a previous concert, HARLEM HOUTHOUSES, the orchestra payed tribute to some of Harlem's most hallowed music venues. For this concert maestro Sanabria and the MSM ACJO take center stage with a program celebrating East Harlem's rich Latin music history. In 1939 at the Park Palace Ballroom on East 110th Street and Fifth Avenue The Machito Afro-Cubans directed by Mario Bauzá were the first band to fuse Afro-Cuban rhythms with jazz arranging technique and the virtuosity of the jazz improviser.

BIOGRAPHIES

BOBBY SANABRIA, a seven-time Grammy nominee, as a leader and on numerous other projects as a sideman - drummer, percussionist, composer, arranger, conductor, producer, educator, film-maker, bandleader, and multi-cultural warrior, Bobby Sanabria has performed and recorded with such legends as Dizzy Gillespie, Tito Puente, Mongo Santamaría, Paquito D'Rivera, Ray Barretto, Candido, Henry Threadgill, Larry Harlow, an Afro-Cuban jazz Godfather, Mario Bauzá.

His first big band recording, Live & In Clave!!! was nominated for a mainstream Grammy in 2001. In 2003 he was nominated for a Latin Grammy for, "50 Years of Mambo", A Tribute to Damaso Perez Prado. DRUM! Magazine named him Percussionist of the Year in 2005. Grammy nominations followed for Big Band Urban Folktales (2008) which also won Best Latin Jazz Award from the Jazz Journalists Association, Kenya Revisited Live!!! conducting the Manhattan School of Music Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra (2009), Tito Puente Masterworks Live!!! conducting the MSM ACJO (2011) and the recent double Grammy nominated Multiverse (2013). This South Bronx native of Puerto Rican parentage is a 2006 inductee into the Bronx Walk of Fame where he has a street named after him. He holds a BM from the Berklee College of Music as is on the faculty of the New School and the Manhattan School of Music where he conducts Afro-Cuban Jazz Big Bands at both schools. He is associate producer of the TV documentaries "The Palladium: Where Mambo Was King" shown on BRAVO, winner of the IMAGINE award for best TV documentary of 2003 and "From Mambo to Hip Hop", ALMA award, best documentary for TV shown on PBS in 2007. He is the author of the acclaimed video series, Getting Started on Congas and he is a featured performer on the DVD, Modern Drummer Festival 2006, from Hudson Music.
Mr. Sanabria is featured in the 4 hour documentary, LATIN MUSIC USA, which aired on PBS in 2009. 2011 saw him garnering the Percussionist of the Year Award from the Jazz Journalists Association. In 2012 Mr. Sanabria spearheaded a successful campaign to re-instate the Latin Jazz category in the Grammys after it was unjustly cut in 2011 filing a landmark lawsuit against the Grammys along with fellow plaintiffs Eugene Marlow, Ben Lapidus and Mark Levine which caused the Academy to re-instate the category in 2012. His current CD, Multiverse, was recently nominated for two Grammys Best Latin Jazz CD and Best Instrumental Arrangement (2013)

Eugene Marlow, Ph.D. is an award-winning composer/arranger, producer, presenter, performer, author/journalist, and educator. Dr. Marlow has written over 200 classical and jazz compositions for solo instruments, jazz and classical chamber groups, and jazz big band. Three of his charts appear on Grammy-nominated albums: Marlow's big band chart "El Aché de Sanabria (en Moderación)" on Bobby Sanabria's 2007 Grammy-nominated album "Big Band Urban Folktales" (JazzHeads). His reconstruction and orchestration of "Me Acuerdo De Ti, " originally recorded by Tito Puente with Celia Cruz, appears on the 2011 Latin-Grammy nominated "Tito Puente Masterworks Live!" (Jazzheads) recorded by the Manhattan School of Music Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra. Marlow's big band arrangement of his original "Broken Heart" appears on Bobby Sanabria's 2012 double Grammy-nominated "Multiverse" album (Jazzheads). Under his own MEII Enterprises indie label, he has produced eight critically acclaimed CDs of original compositions and arrangements.
"A Fresh Take" (MEII Enterprises 2011) was called ". . . a cross-cultural collaboration that spins and grooves" by The New York City Jazz Record. Marlow expects to release "Obrigado Brasil!"-a 10-track album of original compositions inspired by the music and culture of Brazil—in late 2013. Dr. Marlow is founder of The Heritage Ensemble, a quintet that performs his original compositions and arrangements in various jazz, Afro-Cuban, Brazilian, and neo-classical styles. Marlow is senior co-chair of the Milt Hinton Jazz Perspectives concert series at Baruch College (The City University of New York), now in its 21st season, where he teaches courses in media and culture. Author of 11 books and 355+ articles, he is currently drafting a book on jazz in China. He is a 2010 recipient of the James W. Carey award for journalism excellence from the Media Ecology Association for his numerous contributions to www.jazz.com. He often writes for JAZZed Magazine. Dr. Marlow is a former member of the BMI Jazz Composers Workshop, and current member of the Jazz Journalists Association, American Composers Forum, the New York Composers Circle, the National Music Publishers Association, and the National Music Teachers Association. He is a voting member of The Recording Academy and was fellow plaintiff in 2012 along with Bobby Sanabria, Mark Levine and Dr. Ben Lapidus in a landmark lawsuit against NARAS that was instrumental in re-instating the Latin Jazz category back into the Grammys.

Kyle Athayde is a performer, composer and arranger currently living in New York City. He is the conductor, director, and chief composer and arranger of the NYC big band "Kyle Athayde Dance Party." Kyle plays vibraphone, piano, trumpet, and drums professionally, and also plays congas, timbales, bass, and bass clarinet. He also composes and arranges music in a variety of genres, including Jazz, Classical, Afro-Cuban, and Hip-Hop. Some of his favorite musicians are J. S. Bach, Duke Ellington, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Eric Dolphy, Dmitri Shostakovich, Louis Armstrong, Igor Stravinsky, Charlie Parker, Olivier Messiaen, Art Tatum, and the Machito Orchestra. In his time studying at Juilliard, Kyle fostered a great love for Modern and Classical dance. He writes music for and plays with a variety of dancers and choreographers, and especially loves the work of Jose Limon, Antony Tudor, Merce Cunningham, and Ohad Naharin. He is a graduate of the Juilliard School's Jazz program.

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