11th ENCUENTRO NYC CELEBRATES PABLO MAYOR’S 50th BIRTHDAY
MORE THAN 30 MUSICIANS ON STAGE INCLUDING ARTURO O’FARRILL, EDDY ZERVIGON, LOUIS BAUZÓ, FOLKLORE URBANO ORCHESTRA,
GREGORIO URIBE, EDMAR CASTAÑEDA, MEMBERS OF MAKU, THE FOLK COLOMBIA ALL STARS DEBUT AND MORE…
NOVEMBER 15, 6:00 – 10:00PM @ LE POISSON ROUGE
“This festival at Poisson Rouge is absolutely mandatory for anyone who loves jazz, Latin, world and just music in general.” Arturo O’Farrill
—-A special birthday tribute to its founder, Pablo Mayor; a visionary pianist, composer, bandleader, and producer who has been instrumental in promoting Colombian music in the U.S.A. and abroad. Some of Pablo’s closest friends and collaborators will grace the stage, including Arturo O’Farrill, Louis Bauzó, Eddy Zervigon, members of Orquesta Broadway, a full line-up of Encuentro NYC artists including harpist Edmar Castañeda, big band leader vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Gregorio Uribe, members of MAKU, Limon dancer Daniel Fetecua, marimba player from Colombia’s Pacific coast and leader of Grupo Chonta Diego Obregon, gaitero and drummer Martin Verjarano from Chia’s Dance Party and La Cumbiamba eNeYe, singer Andrea Tierra, guitarists and composers Alejandro Flórez and Sebastián Cruz, classical solo guitarist Nilko Andreas Guarín, and the Manhattan debut of the FolkCOLOMBIA ALL STARS collective which includes Encuentro artists Ronald Polo, Alejandro Zuleta, Johanna Castañeda, among others.
“It is only fit that I will finally get a chance to bring everything together, a very personal ENCUENTRO of the diverse aspects of my musical life at this marker of 50 years,” says Pablo Mayor. “I am honored to have the brilliant artists of ENCUENTRO, along with my close friends and collaborators that span my 15 years of composing, performing, producing, and teaching in New York City. They are an inspiration to me, and with them, I am putting together a real PACHANGA, a Colombian style party, with music to reminisce and music to celebrate,” he concludes.
This four-hour celebration will highlight Pablo Mayor’s career: his work as founder of the ENCUENTRO NYC Colombian Music festival and as producer and composer of his own decade-long Colombian project Folklore Urbano; his job as resident songwriter for ID Studio Theatre company; the 15 years as pianist and arranger of Eddy Zervigon’s legendary Afro-Cuban charanga Orquesta Broadway; his educational project at Harlem’s Harbor Conservatory with renowned Afro-Cuban percussionist Louis Bauzó; his multi-arts collaboration known as AMALGAMA Music and Dance Project with Limon dancer Daniel Fetecua; his work with the collective FolkColombia Música y Danza of the Center for Traditional Music and Dance which he was instrumental in founding; as well as the past four years of work writing music for Arturo O’Farrill’s Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra, most notably for his recent grammy-nominated album “Offense of the Drum.”
The colorful program will include salsa, contemporary dance, cumbia, Mexican guapango—a collage of this prolific composers’ diverse body of work. The FolkCOLOMBIA ALL STARS (of the Center for Traditional Music and Dance) will make their New York debut to end the show with all-out Colombian style dance party, with familiar Colombian hits and originals by the collective. It will be quintessential Encuentro NYC-a bohemian night of listening and dancing, eating and drinking!
ENCUENTRO NYC each year aims to engage international audiences with the now rooted and ever-vibrant scene of renowned and emerging Colombian New York-based artists, and will expand into pan-Latin territory this November with the presence of some of New York’s most prestigious names in Latin music.