the Pablo Mayor Trio – Announcing new album 2026
For more than two decades, Colombian-born, New York-based pianist, composer, and bandleader Pablo Mayor has shaped a richly personal musical language grounded in Colombian folkloric traditions and expanded through the harmonic possibilities of jazz and contemporary improvisation. Since arriving in New York in 1999, he has cultivated a vibrant artistic life marked by collaboration, community building, and a sustained commitment to exploring the depth and breadth of Colombian musical identity. His long standing work with his Folklore Urbano ensembles, his cross-genre projects, and his mentorship within New York’s Latin and global music communities all reflect an artist guided by curiosity, cultural connection, and a continual search for new expression. Mayor’s early influence in New York grew through his creation of the Encuentro NYC Colombian Music Festival, which, for many years, provided an essential gathering place for Colombian musicians and audiences across the city. The festival celebrated Colombia’s diverse regional traditions while offering a platform for new work, artistic exchange, and community dialogue. Alongside this curatorial work, Mayor developed the Folklore Urbano Orchestra, an ensemble that wove cumbia, porro, currulao, bambuco, and other folkloric rhythms into sophisticated arrangements shaped by jazz harmony and New York’s dynamic musical environment.
Throughout this period, Mayor also emerged as an adept collaborator, traversing Colombian dance music, big band writing, Puerto Rican bomba and plena, and NYC salsa. His playing and arrangements have been featured in performances and recordings with GRAMMY winners Arturo O’Farrill and the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra, Colombian icon Totó la Momposina, Puerto Rican pioneers Los Pleneros de la 21, and the legendary charanga ensemble Orquesta Broadway, underscoring the breadth of his musical fluency.
His new album, (Re)Encuentro, brings these experiences into a focused, intimate setting. In the spirit of his Colombian jazz debut album, Aviso, which featured the legendary Andy González on bass, Mayor returns to the trio format as a space for rediscovery. Although he is widely known for his large-ensemble writing, the heart of his creative life has long been the Pablo Mayor Trio, featuring drummer Franco Pinna and bassist Dave Hertzberg. Over more than a decade of collaboration, the trio has become a space of mutual trust and exploration, a foundation for developing ideas that reflect both shared experience and individual artistry. In this recording, the trio sits at the center, and Mayor’s piano reveals its full expressive range — lyrical, rhythmically engaging, and deeply connected to his Colombian roots.
(Re)Encuentro also serves as a showcase for Mayor’s writing: the album illuminates his masterful compositions and elegant arrangements, which capture his unique voice and experience, and combine Afro and indigenous Colombian rhythms with jazz harmonies and form.The album embodies a spirit of reunion (and revisits the sounds of his seminal Encuentro festival), bringing together musicians who have played meaningful roles in Mayor’s artistic journey.
It features Colombian harp virtuoso Edmar Castañeda, who appeared in early editions of Mayor’s festival; master percussionist Moris Cañate, a longtime collaborator steeped in Afro-Colombian traditions; Puerto Rican saxophonist Iván Renta, with whom Mayor has worked extensively in his orchestra and Los Pleneros de la 21; trombonist Eddie Venegas, whose versatility spans salsa, jazz, and theatrical work, including the Buena Vista Social Club Musical; Trombonist and Euphonium playerRafi Malkiel, an original member of Mayor’s Folklore Urbano Orchestra and a long-standing membert of Arturo O’Farrill’s Afro-Latin Jazz Grammy-award winning orchestra. Percussionist Néstor Gómez, a core member of Folklore Urbano, contributes the rhythmic grounding that has defined so much of Mayor’s music. A special guest trumpeter and clarinetist will be announced, adding color and depth to the album’s sound.
Joining Mayor as co-producers are his collaborator and partner, flutist Anna Povich de Mayor; and Eric Oberstein, GRAMMY and Latin GRAMMY-winning producer respected for his work at the intersection of jazz and Latin music. Oberstein has produced major projects with O’Farrill (where Oberstein first collaborated with Mayor on the GRAMMY-winning The Offense of the Drum, which featured Mayor’s “Mercado en Domingo”) and with Cuban-born drummer, composer, and MacArthur “Genius” Fellow Dafnis Prieto.
(Re)Encuentro reflects a shared commitment to articulating Mayor’s musical vision with clarity and depth. The result is a cohesive and personal album that honors the traditions that have shaped his artistry while embracing the nuances of his evolution as a composer, bandleader, and pianist. Through its interplay, rhythmic vitality, and its sense of reunion, (Re)Encuentro offers a vivid portrait of an artist in continual dialogue with his roots, his collaborators, and the city that has shaped his musical life.
Contact us: FolkloreUrbanoNYC@gmail.com