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www.msmnyc.edu
Office of Public
Relations
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Date:
Contact:
September 17, 2009
Debra Kinzler, 917 493 4469, [email protected]
KENYA REVISITED “LIVE”
NOMINATED FOR A LATIN GRAMMY AWARD AS BEST LATIN JAZZ ALBUM
BOBBY SANABRIA AND THE MSM AFRO-CUBAN JAZZ ORCHESTRA with
CANDIDO CAMERO, GUEST ARTIST
2009 RELEASE ON THE JAZZHEADS LABEL
Kenya Revisited “Live”, featuring Bobby Sanabria and the Manhattan School of Music Afro-Cuban Jazz
Orchestra has been nominated for 2009 Best Latin Jazz Album in the Latin Grammys. This recording
also features NEA Jazz Master and Living Legend Candido Camero as guest artist. Kenya Revisited
“Live” was recently released on the Jazzheads label, and is the first in a series of four CDs that marks the
collaboration between Manhattan School of Music and Jazzheads Records.
Kenya Revisited “Live” was recorded at a historic concert that was held at Manhattan School of Music
on April 1, 2008 titled Kenya Revisited. The concert celebrated the 50th anniversary of Machito & The
Afro-Cubans 1957 Jazz Masterwork, Kenya, and showcased the legendary recording in its first-ever live
performance given in its entirety with updated new arrangements.
Bobby Sanabria says about the recording of Kenya Revisited “Live”, “Now 50 years after it was released to
the public, we honor Mario Bauzá, Machito, and all of the musicians who participated on the original
recording with KENYA REVISITED LIVE!!!! Recorded live in concert, you’ll hear a new generation
of players tackle this incredible music as it is re-worked with new progressive arrangements that reflect
the current state of jazz virtuosity. Rejoice as the torch is passed to these young fire breathing dragons
who have dedicated their lives to America’s greatest art form jazz, and the branch of that art form that
represents all of the America’s, Latin jazz.”
The Machito Afro-Cubans and Mario Bauzá recorded Kenya in December 1957 in New York City at
the Odd Fellows Temple at East 106th Street and Park Avenue, and released the recording in 1958.
Kenya featured such luminaries as Cannonball Adderly, alto saxophone; Joe Newman, trumpet; Doc
Cheatham, trumpet, and Candido Camero, congas. The recording has been hailed by both the critics
and cognoscenti as the greatest recording ever done by the legendary founders of the Afro-Cuban jazz
movement.
Machito and the Afro-Cubans, founded in 1939 by Machito and Mario Bauzá, boyhood friends from Havana, Cuba, would
become the first group to fuse the rich harmonic palette of jazz arranging techniques with the complex, exciting polyrhythms
of West African origin that evolved in Cuba. By 1943, the Afro-Cubans would establish themselves as the founders of AfroCuban or Latin Jazz tradition, a tradition born in the El Barrio (Spanish Harlem) section of New York City.
Bobby Sanabria -- multiple Grammy nominated 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 -- has
performed and recorded with such legends as Dizzy Gillespie, Tito Puente, Mongo Santamaría, Paquito D’Rivera, Ray
Barretto, Candido, Arturo Sandoval, Henry Threadgill, Larry Harlow, and the Godfather of Afro-Cuban jazz, Mario Bauzá.
Sanabria’s 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.
His latest recordings are “El Espiritu Jibaro – The Jibaro Spirit” with trombonist Roswell Rudd and cuatro virtuoso Yomo Toro,
which features Bobby with his nonet, Ascensión and the critically acclaimed and 2008 mainstream Grammy nominated, “Big
Band Urban Folktales” with his 19 piece big band, on the Jazzheads label. The NY Times Ben Ratliff wrote...
“As a leader and drummer, he expands the possibilities, moving the sounds of the big band tradition with all the heft and
intricacy and clave-based dance rhythm, into the harmonically oriented sophistication of current New York jazz players.
It’s New York up and down, and back and forth across the last century, from the street to the mambo palaces to the
conservatories.”
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 joins other illustrious Bronx notables such as Stanley Kubrick, Colin Powell, Robert Klein, Eddie
Palmieri, Rita Moreno, Diahann Carroll, and Ray Barretto, to name a few.
He holds a BM from the Berklee College of Music, and currently serves 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 the associate producer of the TV
documentaries “The Palladium: Where Mambo Was King” shown on BRAVO which was winner of the IMAGINE award
for best documentary of 2003 and “From Mambo to Hip Hop”, another award winning documentary (ALMA award, best
documentary for TV) shown on PBS in 2007 which will be available on DVD in 2008. 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. Bobby continues his important work in spreading the Gospel of Latin jazz by being a consultant and featured
on screen interviewee for PBS’s forthcoming landmark 4-hour documentary, LATIN MUSIC U.S.A. premiering nationwide
on PBS October 12, 2009.
The Manhattan School of Music Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra was established in 2000 by Bobby Sanabria and is made up of
an international ensemble of student musicians from both the graduate and undergraduate levels. The MSM Afro-Cuban
Jazz Orchestra has reached international acclaim by performing to standing room only audiences at the 2001 International
Association of Jazz Educators Conference (IAJE) as well as other New York City venues such as Birdland, the Jazz Standard and
Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola at Jazz at Lincoln Center. In October 2007, they performed an outdoor concert with Candido Camero
on the plaza of the Harlem State Office Building located on 125th Street, as part of MSM’s 90th anniversary celebration. The
MSM Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra is dedicated to performing the music of ‘la traditión’ and pays homage to these legends
while continuing to pass on and advance the tradition to the next generation by also premiering new works. Jazz artists who
have been guest performers with the ensemble include Tom Harrell, David Sanchez, Sonny Fortune, Dave Valentine, Arturo
O’Farrill, Ray Barretto, among others.