Event Details
Chico O'Farrill's Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra
All offers expire in advance of the show. Check availability for details.
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Members Who Went Said:
I loved the entire ambience of the place. The waitstaff was readily available and they weren't pushy at all. The music was great.It was well worth it.
Anonymous Member Birdland is an intimate venue with perfect acoustics. And the drinks were great too.
Sheryl Bender Temporarily Conquering New York The O'Farrill Orchestra was fantastic! They were interactive, and the music never failed to please. I wish I could have heard more music, if anything, and will likely be purchasing their album. It was awesome being inside Birdland, given that it's such a historic venue, and the transaction, from the perspective of being a Goldstar event, was flawless. Thank you! |
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Event Highlights
More Details About This Event: This is jazz big-band music at its best! Arranger-bandleader Arturo "Chico" O'Farrill, Sr. began introducing Afro-Cuban rhythms into jazz in the 1940s. The band bearing Chico's name, which is directed by his son Arturo, carries on this legendary style of jazz today.
Pianist/music director Arturo O'Farrill, the winner of the Latin Jazz USA Outstanding Achievement Award for 2003, was born in Mexico and grew up in New York City. Educated at the Manhattan School of Music, Brooklyn College Conservatory, and the Aaron Copeland School of Music at Queens College, he played piano with the Carla Bley Big Band from 1979 through 1983. Arturo then went on to develop as a solo performer with a wide spectrum of artists including Dizzy Gillespie, Steve Turre, Freddy Cole, The Fort Apache Band, Lester Bowie, Harry Belafonte and Jazz at Lincoln Center Artistic Director Wynton Marsalis. In 1995, O'Farrill agreed to direct the band that preserved much of his father's music, Chico O'Farrill's Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra, which has been in residence at Birdland, New York City's famed nightclub, for the past six years. O'Farrill was a special guest soloist at three landmark Jazz at Lincoln Center concerts - Afro-Cuban Jazz: Chico O'Farrill's Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra, November 1995; Con Alma: The Latin Tinge in Big Band Jazz, September 1998; and the 2001 Jazz at Lincoln Center Gala: The Spirit of Tito Puente, November 2001. In 2002, O'Farrill and Marsalis created the Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra for Jazz at Lincoln Center. They got national exposure in 2004 on the PBS “Live From Lincoln Center” broadcast of the Jazz at Lincoln Center's Frederick P. Rose Hall Grand Opening. About Birdland: It was Charlie Parker, familiarly known to his fans and fellow musicians as "Bird," who served as the inspiration for Birdland. Opened in 1949, the club became a locus for the hot jazz scene in New York druing the 30's and 40's. In addition to Parker, many other jazz greats graced the Birdland stage over the years: Count Basie and his smokin' big band made Birdland their New York headquarters, John Coltrane's classic Quartet regularly appeared at the club in the early 1960s, and Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bud Powell, Stan Getz, Lester Young, Erroll Garner, and many, many others played to sold-out audiences. Regulars to the nightly festivities included such household names as Gary Cooper, Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra, Joe Louis, Marlene Dietrich, Ava Gardner, Sammy Davis, Jr. and Sugar Ray Robinson.Now, half a century later, the Birdland banner has been reborn in midtown. After a decade of neighborhood success on the Upper West Side, Birdland owner John Valenti decided to move the club back to Midtown after a decade of neighborhood success on the Upper West Side. The new Birdland offers top-flight jazz in a world class setting, good sight lines and acoustics, elbow room, and a menu ripe with award-winning Southern Cuisine. Since the reemergence of the club, midtown Manhattan has been treated to some of the best jazz on the planet, including memorable sets by such musicians as Michael Brecker, Pat Metheny, Roy Haynes, Lee Konitz, Tony Williams, Mark Murphy, Diana Krall, Michel Petrucciani, John Scofield, Kevin Mahogany, Dave Holland, and Tito Puente, as well as the big bands of Chico O'Farrill, Toshiko Akiyoshi, and Maria Schneider. |
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