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Gabriel Alegría Afro-Peruvian Sextet
Celebrates 10th Anniversary
With 5th CD "10,"
To Be Released by ZOHO Music
August 7
Special Guests Include Arturo O'Farrill,
Ron Carter, Russell Ferrante, Badal Roy
The New York City- & Lima-Based Ensemble Announces
Twice-Monthly Residency at the Zinc Bar
To Begin August 13, Through December
July 22, 2015
 A decade of musical innovation by Gabriel Alegría's Afro-Peruvian Sextet is something to celebrate, and the ensemble marks this anniversary in glorious style with the release of 10, due for release August 7
by ZOHO Music. The program on the band's 5th CD is richly infused with
Alegría's trademark synthesis of folkloric Afro-Peruvian rhythms, jazz,
and other musical strains.
"It's a concept album," Alegría
says. "For our 10th anniversary, we wanted to give special care to
American and Peruvian standards. It all comes together in the
arrangements in the Afro-Peruvian style. We've incorporated many guest
artists, people who have helped us along the way. Most importantly,
we've brought together jazz musicians with eminent Peruvian musicians,
and we're the glue that holds it together."
The band's unique
blend of deep scholarship and playfulness is evident throughout, with
each piece serving as a statement about the delicate balance required to
keep one foot in New York and one in Lima: "My Favorite Things," Juan Tizol's "Caravan," and Ornette Coleman's "Lonely Woman" set to a sensuous festejo rhythm; Joe Zawinul's "Birdland"
performed as a tribute to the great Peruvian percussionist Alex Acuña,
formerly of Weather Report; ingenious renditions of the American and
Peruvian national anthems.
Guests including bass legend Ron Carter, Grammy Award-winning pianist Arturo O'Farrill, Yellowjackets keyboardist Russell Ferrante, and tabla expert and Miles Davis alumnus Badal Roy
augment the sextet, half of whose players are based in Alegría's native
Lima and half in New York City, where he is a Professor of Jazz Studies
at New York University.
Freddy "Huevito" Lobatón,
a founding member of the sextet, is a master of Afro-Peruvian
percussion who grounds the band in the folkloric textures of the
box-like cajón, the cajita, and the quijada (made from the jaw bone of
an ass). Drummer Hugo Alcázar, also a founding member, incorporates the cajón into his drum kit's polyrhythmic feel, while American-born drummer Shirazette Tinnin gracefully navigates the predominantly 12/8 beats. Alegría shares the front line with tenor saxophonist Laura Andrea Leguía, a tremendously expressive player who helped found the band. Peruvian criollo guitarist Yuri Juárez
provides expertly calibrated rhythmic support and telegraphic solos. In
New York, bass duties are shared by two veteran masters, Puerto
Rican-born John Benitez and Nigerian-American Essiet Essiet.
 Born (1970) and raised in Lima, Perú, Gabriel Alegría
has divided his time between Perú and the United States throughout his
life. He attended high school in Gambier, Ohio, where his famous
playwright father, Alonso Alegría, was a visiting professor at Kenyon
College at the time. Playing an arrangement of "'Round Midnight" in his high school band led him to purchase a Miles Davis
recording of the tune. The difference between the chart he was playing
and the way Davis played it was a revelation to the 16-year-old
trumpeter. The realization that "You can do your own thing with
something and create your own ideas and identity" would help him years
later in merging the Afro-Peruvian sounds of his homeland with American
jazz music.
After receiving his
bachelor's degree at Kenyon, Alegría enrolled at City College of New
York and earned an M.A. under the tutelage of Ron Carter.
He then returned to Perú for seven years, five of them spent in the
trumpet section of the Lima Philharmonic while moonlighting as a jazz
and rock musician around the capital city. He relocated to Los Angeles
and spent four and a half years at the University of Southern
California, where the Afro-Peruvian Sextet first came
together in 2005. While at USC (he earned his doctorate in 2007),
Alegría studied, worked, toured, and recorded with his mentor Bobby Shew, vocalist Tierney Sutton, trombonist Bill Watrous, and keyboardist/composer Russell Ferrante -- all of whom contributed to the sextet's debut CD, Nuevo Mundo (Saponegro Records, 2008).
The band released three more albums on Saponegro -- Pucusana (2010), El Secreto del Jazz Afroperuano (2012), and Ciudad de Los Reyes (2013) -- in its crusade "to spread Afro-Peruvian jazz music to the world," says the trumpeter.
"New York is a place
that's almost an orgy of people mixing things," Alegría says. "You have
to be careful to present things on their own terms. We work very hard to
make sure each of the traditions is employed correctly, really knowing
the background before we use it. That helped set the band apart and get
attention."
Photo: Bex Wade (Sextet), Jorge Luis Pardo V. (Gabriel)
Web Site: gabrielalegria.com
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Thursday, July 30, 2015
USA/PERU: "10," Gabriel Alegria Afro-Peruvian Sextet's 10th-Anniversary CD, Due from ZOHO Aug. 7
