The Institute’s 31st Jazz Festival is scheduled for Sunday, August 28, from 5 to 7 p.m. at The Wharf, a park-like property at 10141 Wharf Road in Waynesboro, Pa.
The concert is offered free to the public. Rain location is Waynesboro Area Middle School.
This year’s concert will feature the Arturo O’Farrill Afro Latin Jazz Quintet, featuring Arturo O’Farrill (piano), Adam O’Farrill (trumpet), Zack O’Farrill (drums), Liany Mateo (bass), and Victor Pablo (percussion).
Pianist, composer, and educator Arturo O’Farrill is the winner of seven Grammy awards with multiple other nominations. Born in Mexico, O’Farrill grew up in New York City, and began his professional career with the Carla Bley Band, Dizzy Gillespie, Lester Bowie, Wynton Marsalis, Harry Belafonte (where he served a music director), and Jerry Gonzalez and the Fort Apache Band.
In 2007, he founded the Afro Latin Jazz Alliance as a not-for-profit educational organization dedicated to the performance and preservation of Afro Latin music. In December 2010 he 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.
O’Farrill’s renowned Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra (which plays weekly at Birdland in NYC) and his Afro Latin Quintet have performed at jazz festivals and clubs around the world. O’Farrill has also written ballets and performed with Ballet Hispanico, the Malpaso Dance Company, and the Alvin Ailey Dance Company.
As a composer he 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. He is professor of Global Jazz Studies and assistant dean for equity, diversity and inclusion at University of California (UCLA), has been honored as a Steinway Artist for many years, and is now a Blue Note Records recording artist.
O’Farrill’s 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.
Adam O’Farrill (trumpet) has performed and/or recorded with artists such as Rudresh Mahanthappa, Mary Halvorson, Arturo O’Farrill, Mulatu Astatke, Brasstracks, Stephan Crump, Onyx Collective, Anna Webber, and Samora Pinderhughes. As a composer and bandleader, his quartet recordings Stranger Days (2016) and El Maquech (2018) were critically acclaimed, and the latter album was listed as one of the best jazz albums of 2018 by the NPR Jazz Critics Poll, The Boston Globe, and Nextbop. In 2018 and 2019, Adam performed with his electro-acoustic nonet, Bird Blown Out of Latitude. O’Farrill comes from a rich musical background—his grandfather was composer and arranger Chico O’Farrill; his father is the cultural boundary-pushing composer and pianist, Arturo O’Farrill; his mother, Alison Deane is a classical pianist and educator; and his brother, Zack O’Farrill is a drummer, composer, and educator. Adam O’Farrill is of Mexican, Cuban, and Irish heritage on his dad’s side, and Eastern European Jewish and African-American on his mom’s side. This, combined with growing up in a place of immense cultural diversity, has shaped his tendency to break stylistic borders within not only his original music, but also in terms of who he works with as a sideman. In 2019, he won the Downbeat Critics Poll in the Rising Star Trumpet category.
Zack O’Farrill is a drummer/percussion and educator from Brooklyn, NY. He grew up playing jazz and Latin music throughout the city and with his father, Arturo and brother, Adam. He has been teaching for almost ten years with the Afro Latin Jazz Alliance, as well as the Salvation Army and the Institute for Collaborative Education. He continues performing a wide range of music throughout NYC and the world with various artists and recently started a group dedicated to Cuban rumba called La Rumbita Biquéy with several collaborators. He has recorded drums and written arrangements on many records and continues working as a composer/arranger for various projects.
Percussionist Victor Pablo Garcia Gaetan comes from a musical family from San Juan, Puerto Rico. At an early age, his father Victor Garcia—a pianist/composer—taught him his first rhythms: Puerto Rican plena on panderos, martillo on bongo, marcha on conga, cascara and campaneo on timbales, and songo on drumset. In New York City Victor Pablo performs in Broadway pits, chamber concerts, jazz jams, salsa gigs, singer-songwriter shows, bombazos, plenazos, and is a member of contemporary percussion quartet Mobius Percussion, bomba/jazz group Fernando García Band, the TM Street Band, and is co-music director/composer/drummer for People of Earth.
He appears in recordings of Gilberto Santa Rosa, Victor García & La Sonora Sanjuanera, Fernando García, TM Street Band, Albert Sánchez, to name a few, and he can be seen in shows like Mozart In The Jungle, America’s Got Talent, and Especial Banco Popular De Puerto Rico Para El Mundo. He’s performed with Arturo O’Farrill, Los Pleneros de la 21, Andy Montañez, Ismael Miranda, NG2, Michael Stuart, DLG, Frankie Negrón, Cita Rodríguez, Nestor Torres, Dayramir González, La Sonora Sanjuanera, Wordless Music Orchestra, Itai Kriss, La Mecánica Popular, Flaco Navaja, Nina Rodríguez, Redobles de Cultura, La 95 Salsa Orchestra, Orchestra of the Americas, Delaware Symphony, Symphony In C, Philadelphia Orchestra Percussion Group, and Sõ Percussion.
Liany Mateo, a 20-year-old jazz bassist from Jersey City, NJ, has already studied and performed with some of the country’s top names in jazz. While in high school, she studied under renowned bassist Ben Wolfe. Through her involvement with the New Jersey Performing Arts “Jazz for Teens” program, she has worked with vocalist Jazzmeia Horn, saxophonists Mark Gross and Wayne Escoffery, and drummer Alvester Garnett, as well as with an all-star band that included drummer Jerome Jennings and pianist Benito Gonzalez. In 2015, Mateo received the New Jersey Governor’s Award in Arts Education and was awarded the first-place title in Hudson County, New Jersey’s Solo Strings Competition. She has performed with musicians such as Carl Allen, Randy Napoleon, and Brandee Younger. She holds a jazz degree from the esteemed Michigan State University (2020) and a master’s degree from the Berklee Global Jazz Institute (2021). Through these institutions, she has been mentored by jazz performers Rodney Whitaker, Danilo Pérez, Joe Lovano, John Patitucci, and Linda Oh.
Conceived in 1992 and presented every year since, The Institute’s Jazz Festival was previously held at Renfrew Park and has featured a long list of jazz legends, including David “Fathead” Newman, Randy Brecker, Bud Shank, Houston Person, Gary Bartz, Karrin Allison, Lew Tabackin, Joey DeFranceso, Frank Morgan, Jeff “Tain” Watts, Rene Marie, Vincent Herring, Ingrid Jensen, Eric Alexander, Joe Locke, and Steve Wilson.
Pretzel Spot Café food truck will be on site and BYOB is permitted. Parking is available on the property. Those attending are encouraged to bring lawn chairs and blankets, and picnics are welcome. As in the past, cold water will be available free to all attendees.
Underwriting support for this event by lead sponsor, FirstEnergy Foundation, plus a grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency. Further sponsors include Hamilton Family Foundation on behalf of Hamilton Nissan; Beverly McFarland, in memory of Tom McFarland; Franklin County Visitors Bureau; and Andrew and Sally Sussman. Additional support by The Institute’s Today’s Horizon Fund contributors: The Nora Roberts Foundation; The John R. Hershey Jr. and Anna L. Hershey Family Foundation; Alma W. Oyer; APX Enclosures, Inc.; the Carolyn Terry Eddy Family: Carolyn, with daughters Connie Fleagle & Kim Larkin, and an anonymous donor, in honor of the life and work of Eunice Statler. Facility support provided courtesy of Jeff and Nancy Mace.
For more information call The Institute at 717-762-0373, or visit www.natureandcultureinstitute.org.