Purchase College Latin Jazz Festival Pays Tribute To Eddie Palmieri

On Saturday, February 10, the inaugural Purchase College Latin Jazz Festival will take place at The Performing Arts Center, Purchase College (The Purchase PAC). The festival will include two events: The Purchase College Jazz Festival at 3:30pm and A Tribute to Eddie Palmieri at 8pm.

The daytime Purchase College Latin Jazz Festival will be a showcase and competition, featuring five regional high school Latin Jazz bands. The participants are: Jazz House Kids Latin Jazz Ensemble (Montclair, NJ), Celia Cruz High School (Bronx, NY), Susan Wagner High School (Staten Island, NY), All-City Jazz Orchestra (Manhattan, NY), and All-City Latin Orchestra (Manhattan, NY).

Each band will perform a 30-minute set for the public, and then perform a second time for a panel of judges made up of professional Latin jazz musicians Eddie Palmieri, David DeJesus, Ray Vega, and Ricardo Rodriguez. The ensembles will receive feedback on their performances, and the most exceptional students from each group will be invited to participate in the evening performance.

The festival is open to the public, and $25 general admission tickets are available on The Purchase PAC's website at https://www.artscenter.org/events/purchase-college-latin-jazz-festival/.

The second half of the program, starting at 8pm, will be a musical tribute to NEA Jazz Master and ten-time Grammy Award winner Eddie Palmieri. Known as one of the finest pianists of the past 60 years, "El Maestro" is a bandleader, arranger and composer of salsa and Latin jazz. His signature style fuses the Afro-Caribbean rhythms of his Puerto Rican heritage with the complexity of his jazz influences: Thelonious Monk, Herbie Hancock, McCoy Tyner, and his older brother, Charlie Palmieri.

The line-up for A Tribute to Eddie Palmieri includes trumpeter Ray Vega, saxophonist David DeJesus, bassist Ricardo Rodriguez, and the Purchase Latin Jazz Orchestra - an ensemble made up of top students from the Purchase College Conservatory of Music. While he no longer performs live, Palmieri himself will be in attendance, and has promised to address the audiences during the evening concert.

Tickets for A Tribute to Eddie Palmieri range in price from $25 - $55 and can be purchased on The Performing Arts Center's website at: https://www.artscenter.org/events/eddie-palmieri-and-the-purchase-latin-jazz-orchestra/.

"The Purchase PAC has built a cultural legacy on celebrating artistic creativity and using it as an opportunity to lift up a new generation of artists and musicians. I'm thrilled and delighted that thanks to our collaboration with Purchase College Assistant Professor of Music and Latin Jazz Orchestra Conductor David DeJesus we're able to celebrate the fantastic musical legacy of Eddie Palmieri while passing the torch to future talents in the Latin Jazz field."

The Purchase College Latin Jazz Festival is presented by The Performing Arts Center, Purchase College, in collaboration with the Purchase College Conservatory of Music. This engagement is supported by The Audience Building Project, a program of the Lake Placid Center for the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts with support from the Governor and New York State Legislature.

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