Grammy Award-winning jazz musician to perform during Purdue Jazz Festival

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – The annual Purdue Jazz Festival will kick off its 27th year with a performance by Arturo O’Farrill and the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra. Hailed by the “New York Times” as “One of the best jazz orchestras in existence,” Arturo O’Farrill and the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra will perform at 8 p.m. Jan. 20 in Loeb Playhouse.

This performance is presented by Purdue Convocations with support from Dr. Nancy DiMartino and Stephen Borghi.

Ticket holders are invited to attend a preshow discussion at 7 p.m. in Stewart Center, Room 310, with Don Seybold, host of Inside Jazz on WBAA Radio, and pianist and composer Dr. Judd Danby.

With ideological and economic isolation implemented amid the Cold War, Cuba has often seemed farther than 90 miles from the United States. Cuban culture flourished stateside nevertheless, especially in its influence on American jazz.

Cubop began when conga legend Chano Pozo joined Dizzy Gillespie onstage in 1947 and proliferated through Cuban expats like Machito, Celia Cruz and bandleader Chico O’Farrill. A Birdland regular with his Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra, Chico’s 1950 “Afro-Cuban Jazz Suite” (featuring Charlie “Bird” Parker) became a standard of the Cubop sound. After Fidel Castro rose to power in 1959, Chico never returned to Cuba. Although Chico died in 2001, his spirit and sound live on thanks to his son, pianist and composer Arturo O’Farrill.

A longtime soloist for Gillespie, Wynton Marsalis and Harry Belafonte, Arturo has led the ensemble (rechristened the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra) since 1995, performing worldwide and earning two Grammy Awards. Arturo also directs jazz studies at Brooklyn College and heads the nonprofit Afro Latin Jazz Alliance to promote Latin Jazz. In 2014 O’Farrill and his orchestra were in Havana to record when news broke of plans to normalize U.S.-Cuban relations. Uniting composers from both countries, O’Farrill’s Grammy-nominated album “Cuba: The Conversation Continues” offers a multicultural carnival that hops borders and genres. The heat of “The Triumphant Journey” celebrates the newly thawed tension; “Vaca Frita” bounces saxophone solos off turntable scratches; “Afro Latin Jazz Suite” complements Chico’s seminal composition; and the remainder runs the gamut of guajira, post-bop, salsa, highlife, progressive jazz, cha cha, Yoruban folk, changüí and funk.

Tickets are $34 for adults and $24 for those 18 years and younger, Purdue students and Ivy Tech Lafayette students. Tickets are available at the Stewart Center box office at 765-494-3933 or 800-914-SHOW. Information on group tickets, available to groups of 10 or more, is available by calling 765-496-1977 or visiting https://purdue.edu/convocations/group-sales/.

Initiated in 1902, Purdue Convocations was one of the first professional performing arts presenters in the United States. Each year, Convocations offers the region 30-40 performances of widely varying genres: Broadway-style shows, theater, dance, children's theater, world music, jazz, and chamber music, along with rock, pop, country and comedy attractions. With a vision for connecting artists and audiences in artistic dialogue and for drawing in academic discourse, Purdue Convocations aims to promote frequent exposure to and familiarity with human cultural expression in a multitude of forms and media. 

Source: Abby Eddy, Purdue Convocations director of marketing, 765-494-9712, aeeddy@purdue.edu

Note to Journalists: Publication-quality photos are available at http://www.convocations.org/press