Jazz Festival Concert with Guest Artist Papo Vazquez

Trombonist, composer, arranger has 40+ years of career spanning Latin, Jazz and Afro Caribbean music.

National Endowment for the Arts Master Artist, Grammy Nominee.

•Musical Director for the National Puerto Rican Day Parade Orchestra, (NYC/WABC) 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2022

•Commissioned by Wynton Marsalis to compose music for Jazz and Art series, conducted and performed with J@LC orchestra,

CD release August 2019

•New York Pops Education, Board of Education certified, 2018 and 2019

•Commissioned new music for Afro Latin Jazz Alliance for “Nueva Musica” concert series

•Grammy nominated for Papo Vázquez’ Mighty Pirates, Marooned/Aíslado, 2008

Presented with the NEA Master Artist Award by Pregones Theater 2011

Lead Master Class at UCLA 2022
Lead Master Class at the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music 2022

​Born in 1958 in Philadelphia, PA, although his young formative years were in Puerto Rico. By age 17, Vazquez headed to New York City, recorded and performed with top artists in the salsa music scene like The Fania All-Stars, Ray Barretto, Willie Colón, Eddie Palmieri, Larry Harlow, and Hector La Voe. Vázquez became a key player in NYC’s burgeoning Latin jazz scene of the late 1970's.

Went on to perform and/or record with jazz luminaries Tito Puente, Dizzy Gillespie’s United Nations Orchestra, Chico O’Farrill, Ray Charles, Slide Hampton’s World of Trombones, Jerry Gonzalez Fort Apache among many others. By the age of 22, Vázquez had traveled the globe.

Vázquez was deeply moved by jazz at a young age. His appreciation and knowledge of the indigenous music of the Caribbean provides him with a unique ability to fuse Afro-Caribbean rhythms with freer melodic and harmonic elements of progressive jazz.

Read more...https://www.papovazquez.com/bio