Brace yourself, Brooklyn, this is history
in the making. .
On Oct. 26, the Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra (ALJO), Jazz at Lincoln
Center’s latest undertaking, makes its inaugural performance
in the Borough of Kings at the Brooklyn Center for the Performing
Arts. In addition, the concert will be a sort of homecoming for
ALJO musical director and pianist Arturo O’Farrill, who is a
proud alumnus of the Brooklyn College Conservatory and a Park
Slope resident.
"I moved to Brooklyn when I was 17 years old, which is
longer ago than I care to confess," O’Farrill says with
a laugh before a set at the Manhattan nightclub Birdland on a
recent Sunday. "I love Brooklyn; my kids were born there,
they’re being raised there. I live in a very multicultural community
– it’s a real microcosm of New York at its best." The bandleader
smiles broadly, then returns to the topic at hand, the genesis
of ALJO.
Incredibly, the Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra came into being as
the result of a missed meeting in 1995. O’Farrill, as music director
of his father’s big band, the Chico O’Farrill Afro-Cuban Jazz
Orchestra, had just completed a guest performance with Jazz at
Lincoln Center, and now he wanted to ask trumpeter and artistic
director Wynton Marsalis for advice about starting a repertory
orchestra for Latin jazz.
He contacted Marsalis’ assistant and told her why he wanted
to schedule some time with Marsalis, who has led the Lincoln
Center Jazz Orchestra since its inception as a program in 1991
and knows a thing or two about how to run a band. Marsalis was
happy to oblige, but life being what it is, the two busy musicians
never found time to put their heads together, and the idea dropped.
Cut to December 2001. After the tree-lighting ceremony at Lincoln
Center (at which O’Farrill performed), Wynton sidled up to Arturo
and told him that he’d decided to go ahead with Arturo’s idea
and create a big band designed specifically to play Latin jazz.
And he wanted Arturo to lead it.
"I was flabbergasted," O’Farrill recalls, his face
lighting up. "Jazz at Lincoln Center is the premier non-profit
jazz-presenting organization in the world. To be accorded that
kind of recognition for Afro-Cuban jazz and Latin music on an
institutional level is a deep, deep honor, which I take very
seriously."
Since that time, O’Farrill has faced the daunting task of assembling
the musicians, selecting the repertoire, and putting the fledgling
ensemble through its paces. The scintillating results will be
on display as the Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra swings into action
in the Walt Whitman Theatre at Brooklyn College on Oct. 26.
So how did O’Farrill go about putting together the ALJO? "I
started at the very top with musicians whom I consider to be
the very best practitioners of both Latin and jazz music – because
it’s an Afro-Latin jazz orchestra," explains O’Farrill.
"It’s really an all-star orchestra. Every member is a player
of major stature."
Indeed, the roster reads like a who’s who of Latin jazz: Michael
Philip Mossman, John Walsh, Jim Seeley and Ray Vega on trumpets;
Conrad Herwig, Papo Vazquez, Reynaldo Jorge and Douglas Purviance
on trombones; Bobby Porcelli (alto), Pablo Calogero (alto), Mario
Rivera (tenor), Bob Franceschini (tenor) and Chris Karlic (baritone)
on saxophones; Joe Gonzalez and Milton Cardona on percussion;
Phoenix Rivera on drums; Andy Gonzalex on bass; and Arturo O’Farrill,
music director and piano.
O’Farrill is a natural selection as the ALJO’s founding music
director. The music is in his very bloodline: His late father,
Chico, whose compositions and charts for Count Basie, Stan Kenton
and Bennie Goodman helped popularize the music in the late 1940s
and ’50s, was one of the principal architects of the Latin jazz
genre.
But Arturo’s appointment is about more than his musical lineage,
distinguished as it may be. He is an accomplished musician, bandleader
and recording artist whose musical resume includes a lengthy
stint with the Carla Bley Big Band, work with such luminaries
as Dizzy Gillespie, Steve Turre, Lester Bowie and Harry Belafonte,
and numerous recordings. While he is very much the product of
his musical upbringing, he remains steadfastly his own man.
"I was about 8 or 9 when I really fell in love with music
for my own sake, not because I was told to," he says when
asked about growing up in a household brimming with music. "Very
early on, I discovered that my father and I were from different
generations; I loved Jimi Hendrix and John Coltrane, and he loved
Count Basie and Duke Ellington.
"I learned from him that as a musician you have to be very
serious and really care about development, practicing and studying,"
he says. "My father was a very hard worker. And I think
that to be halfway capable as a musician, you have to work hard.
Not only just in terms of conditioning your fingers, but in terms
of infusing your mind with music."
Much of the music O’Farrill was busy internalizing turned out
to be the core repertoire of the ALJO. The Brooklyn concert will
showcase classic charts by such Latin jazz legends as Machito,
Ray Santos and Mario Bauza, as well a few pieces by Chico O’Farrill.
One highlight is sure to be the "Afro-Cuban Jazz Suite,"
a rarely performed O’Farrill composition that suggests what might
have happened if George Gershwin had put his American in Havana
instead of Paris.
As for the future, the sky’s the limit for O’Farrill and the
ALJO.
"The name Jazz at Lincoln Center brings so much prestige
with it that it opens the door to a thousand venues, and people
who would never have heard of Machito are going to have the opportunity
to hear this great music," O’Farrill enthuses. "We’re
going to get the opportunity to travel all over the globe."
First Brooklyn, then the world.
Andrew Clevenger is a
freelance writer and musician living in New York.
The Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra appears
at the Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts’ Walt Whitman
Theatre (2900 Campus Road, one block from the junction of Flatbush
and Nostrand avenues) on Saturday, Oct. 26 at 8 pm. Tickets are
available through the Brooklyn Center box office. Call (718)
951-4500 or visit www.brooklyncenter.com
on the Web.
