Winterlude Jazz Festival

The performances include Chris Hazelton, Sons of Brasil, Eclipse Trio, Gerald Spaits, and Trent Austin. The best in Kansas City jazz all lead up to Arturo O’Farrill and the Afro Latin Jazz Ensemble!

Schedule

Saturday, March 7

• 2 p.m. – Guest Lecturer TBA
• 3 p.m. - Middle/High School Competition Winner *The winning band will be announced in late January*
• 4 p.m. - Gerald Spaits Quintet
• 5 p.m. - Chris Hazelton Quartet
• 7 p.m. - Trent Austin Quartet

Sunday, March 8

• 2 p.m. - Guest Lecturer TBA
• 3 p.m. - Sons of Brasil
• 4 p.m. - JCCC Jazz Band directed by Ryan Heinlein
• 5 p.m. - Eclipse Trio
• 7 p.m. - Arturo O'Farrill and the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra

Bios

Arturo O’Farrill

Arturo O’Farrill (pianist, composer, and educator) was born in Mexico and grew up in New York City. O’Farrill’s professional career began with the Carla Bley Band and continued as a solo performer with a wide spectrum of artists, including Dizzy Gillespie, Lester Bowie, Wynton Marsalis, and Harry Belafonte.

In 2007, he founded the Afro Latin Jazz Alliance as a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the performance, education, and preservation of Afro Latin music. Learn more at afrolatinjazz.org.

In December 2010, O’Farrill traveled with the original Chico O’Farrill Afro Cuban Jazz Orchestra to Cuba, returning his father’s musicians to his homeland. He continues to travel to Cuba regularly as an informal cultural ambassador, working with Cuban musicians, dancers, and students, bringing local musicians from Cuba to the U.S. and American musicians to Cuba.

He has performed with orchestras and bands, including his own Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra and Arturo O’Farrill Sextet, as well as other orchestras and intimate ensembles in the U.S., Europe, Russia, Australia, and South America.

An avid supporter of all the arts, O’Farrill has performed with Ballet Hispanico and the Malpaso Dance Company, for whom he has written three ballets. In addition, the Alvin Ailey Dance Company has in its repertoire a ballet entitled “Open Door,” choreographed by Ron Brown to several of O’Farrill’s compositions and recordings. Ron Brown’s own Evidence Dance Company has commissioned O’Farrill to compose “New Conversations,” which premiered in the summer of 2018 at Jacob’s Pillow in Becket, Massachusetts.

O’Farrill has received commissions from Meet the Composer, Jazz at Lincoln Center, The Philadelphia Music Project, The Apollo Theater, Symphony Space, the Bronx Museum of the Arts, the Young Peoples Chorus of New York, Columbia University, and the New York State Council on the Arts.

His well-reviewed and highly praised “Afro-Latin Jazz Suite” from the album “CUBA: The Conversation Continues” (Motéma) took the 2016 Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Composition and the 2016 Latin Grammy Award for Best Latin Jazz Album. His powerful “Three Revolutions” from the album “Familia-Tribute to Chico and Bebo” was the 2018 Grammy Award (his sixth) winner for Best Instrumental Composition. His album “Four Questions” (ZOHO) is the first to embody all original compositions, including the title track, which features the brilliant orator Dr. Cornel West. This album won a Grammy in 2021.

O’Farrill was artist-in-residence for The Greene Space in New York City, for which he created a four-concert series, including a newly commissioned composition. The series title was “Radical Acts and Musical Deviancy.”

In 2020, O’Farrill’s weekly concerts with the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra, dubbed “Virtual Birdland,” top the list of 10 Best Quarantine Concerts in the New York Times.

He is Professor of Global Jazz Studies and Assistant Dean for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), has been honored as a Steinway Artist for many years, and is now a Blue Note Records Recording Artist.

The Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra & Ensemble

Led by O’Farrill for nearly two decades, the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra (ALJO) has shared a unique combination of big-band jazz and Latin music through the talent and virtuosity of its 18 solo musicians. As a smaller version of the orchestra, the Afro Latin Jazz Ensemble is a prodigious octet, also led by O’Farrill as musical director. The Ensemble’s repertoire includes material performed by the orchestra, as well as pieces composed for a smaller format.

The Grammy Award-winning Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra has enamored international audiences with its creative performances of music by Latin jazz legends, such as Tito Puente, Frank “Machito” Grillo, and Chico O’Farrill, as well as new pieces from some of the most accomplished composers and arrangers in Latin music.

With programs that showcase its versatility, the orchestra has pushed the boundaries of the genre with daring interpretations, performing and commissioning innovative compositions and big band arrangements by Antonio Sánchez, Miguel Zenón, Dafnis Prieto, Guillermo Klein, Pablo Mayor, Michele Rosewoman, Emilio Solla, Papo Vázquez, Vijay Iyer, and Arturo himself, among others.

Over the years, the orchestra has brought its incomparable sound to stages such as “Midsummer Night Swing” at Lincoln Center, Lincoln Center “Out-of-Doors,” The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Boston Symphony Hall, Celebrate Brooklyn Festival, The Newport Festival, Litchfield Jazz Festival (Kent, Connecticut), Joyce Theater, with Ballet Hispánico, Rialto Center for the Performing Arts (Atlanta), Mahalia Jackson Theater, with Ballet Hispánico (New Orleans), Megaron Concert Hall (Athens, Greece), and the Taichung Jazz Festival (Taichung, Taiwan).