Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts to Present Yosvany Terry Afro-Cuban Sextet

Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts at Brooklyn College concludes its 2016-17 Jazz series on Saturday, May 6, 2017 at 8pm with Yosvany Terry Afro-Cuban Sextet. Tickets are $35 and can be purchased at BrooklynCenter.org or by calling the box office at 718-951-4500 (Tue-Sat, 1pm-6pm).

Blending influences from West Africa, Cuba, and American jazz, the GRAMMY Award-nominated artist has created a singular sound, now recognized as one of the most ambitious cross-cultural visions on the contemporary scene.

Saxophonist Yosvany Terryburst onto the jazz and contemporary music scene in New York in 1999. Born into an illustrious musical family in Camaguey, Cuba, Terry is an internationally acclaimed composer, saxophonist, percussionist, bandleader, educator, and cultural bearer of the Afro-Cuban tradition. After immersing himself in the European classical tradition at Havana's prestigious National School of Arts and Amadeo Roldan Conservatory, he went on to perform with major figures in every realm of Cuban music, including celebrated nueva trova singer/guitarist Silvio Rodriguez, pianists Chucho Valdes and Frank Emilio, and Don Pancho y Los Terry, the band led by his father, violinist and shekere master Eladio "Don Pancho" Terry Gonzales.

From his earliest days in New York, Terry has been embraced by the jazz and contemporary music community, playing with Branford Marsalis, Rufus Reid, Dave Douglas, Steve Coleman, Roy Hargrove, Henry Threadgill, trumpeter Avishai Cohen, Jeff "Tain" Watts, Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Taj Mahal, and the Eddie Palmieri Afro-Caribbean Sextet. While best known as a blazing improviser, he's rapidly gaining renown as a composer, bandleader, and educator with a string of high-profile awards, appointments, and commissions. In 2015, Terry was named a recipient of the prestigious Doris Duke Artist Award, and was hired by Harvard University as Director of Jazz Ensembles and Senior Lecturer on Music.

He has received recent commissions from San Francisco's Yerba Buena Garden Festival ("Noches de Parranda" for 12-piece ensemble with the support of The MAP Fund), the French-American Jazz

Exchange with support from the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation and Doris Duke Charitable Foundation ("Ancestral Memories" with French pianist Baptiste Trotignon), and the Harlem Stage (the score for the opera Makandal). Terry also received a grant from Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors and New York State Music Fund to create "Afro-Cuban Roots: Yedégbé," a suite of Arará music documented on his acclaimed 2014 album.

His latest release, 2014's GRAMMY® Award-nominated New Throned King, features music based on cantos and rhythms of the Arará people of the western Cuban province of Matanzas, who hail from the Dahomey kingdom's Fon culture in what is now Benin. His previous album, 2012's Today's Opinion, was selected as one of the Top 10 Albums of the Year by The New York Times' Nate Chinen. Terry's latest project, The Bohemian Trio, is a genre-defying contemporary music ensemble based in New York.

The Yosvany Terry Afro-Cuban Sextet is part of Brooklyn Center's 2016-17 Con Edison Music Masters Series, which concludes with on May 13 at 7:30pm with 10-time GRAMMY winner Chaka Khan.

Visit BrooklynCenter.org for a complete season lineup.

IF YOU GO:

Yosvany Terry Afro-Cuban Sextet

Saturday, May 6, 2017 at 8pm

Whitman Theatre at Brooklyn College
2900 Avenue H, Brooklyn, NY 11210

Tickets: $35
Box Office: BrooklynCenter.org or 718-951-4500 (Tue-Sat, 1pm-6pm)

Groups of 15 or more: 718-951-4600 x3327

Discounts are available for seniors, students, children ages 12 and under, Brooklyn College faculty/staff/alumni, active/retired military personnel, and groups. $10 student rush tickets are available starting one hour before curtain with a valid ID.

Founded in 1954, Brooklyn Center for the PerformingArts at Brooklyn College presents outstanding performing arts and arts education programs, reflective of Brooklyn's diverse communities, at affordable prices. Each season, Brooklyn Center welcomes over 65,000 people to the 2,400 seat Whitman Theatre, including up to 45,000 schoolchildren from over 300 schools who attend their SchoolTime series, one of the largest arts-in-education programs in the borough.

Photo Credit: Govert Driessen

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