Jazz Standard, NYC, Randy Weston at 92

[Hardbopjazz]

I have tickets for Thursday and Saturday. This should be great. Between Randy and Candido, there will be 188 years of great masters on the stage.

“One Mo’ Time!” Jazz Standard is proud to host a birthday celebration for the great pianist Randy Weston, who turns 92 years young on April 6. “Randy Weston has the biggest sound of any jazz pianist since Ellington and Monk, as well as the richest and most inventive beat,” wrote Stanley Crouch in The Village Voice, “but his art is more than projection and time; it's the result of a studious and inspired intelligence...an intelligence that is creating a fresh synthesis of African elements with jazz technique.” The NEA Jazz Master and Guggenheim Foundation Fellow continues to maintain an active schedule: So far this year, Weston has traveled to Cuba, to serve as an artist–in–residence at three different Havana schools; and to Washington, D.C., to lead his African Rhythms Octet in a Kennedy Center tribute to pio-neering African American bandleader James Reese Europe (1880–1919). The music of Randy Weston continues to inform and inspire: Few other jazz artists have so effectively combined “the rhythmic diver-sity of the African Diaspora and the lyrical smarts of New York bebop.” (The New Yorker) 

4/5 SPECIAL GUEST: CECIL BRIDGEWATER AND CANDIDO CAMERO

In a career of more than 40 years, trumpet great Bridgewater has performed and recorded with Horace Silver, Dizzy Gillespie, Art Blakey, Joe Henderson, Roy Brooks, Abdullah Ibrahim and Sam Rivers. He enjoyed a decades–long association with drummer Max Roach and was a stalwart of the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis big band from 1970–1976. The 96 years young Cuban conga master Candido Camero also joins Randy onstage. Candido is considered one of the fathers of modern conga, and has played with a who’s who of jazz legends, from Sonny Rollins to Erroll Garner to Art Blakey.

4/6 SPECIAL GUEST: SEXTET GNAWA OF MOROCCO and MIN XIAO FEN 

“Gnawa music is among Morocco's richest and oldest continuous traditions, dating back to pre–Islam. The extended song–chants speak of spiritual and cultural ceremony, but also of man's life in the corporeal world.” (Piotr Orlov, NPR Music) Min Xiao Fen, from China, is a pipa player and vocalist internationally known for her work in traditional Chinese music, contemporary classical, and jazz.

Randy Weston – piano
Cecil Bridgewater III – trumpet [4/5 only]
Candido Camero – congas [4/5 only]
Billy Harper – tenor saxophone
T.K. Blue – alto & soprano saxophones 
Neal Clarke – percussion
Alex Blake – bass
Lewis Nash – drums

Min Xiao Fen – pipa [4/6 only]
Sextet Gnawa – vocals and sintir [4/6 only]

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

I THINK THE OTHER BIG STORY HERE IS CANDIDO IS BACK HE WAS IN A REHABILITATION PLACE SIMILAR WHAT BARRY HARRIS HAD TO DO AND REALLY I DIDNT KNOW WHAT WAS HAPPENING BUT THIS IS MOST GOOD TO SEE, MOST GOOD TO SEE

[Milestones]

Candido?  So he is 96-years-old and still performing on stage?

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

when it comes to latin percussion, Candido is the ultimate dawg