Virginia Arts Festival Presents Yosvany Terry Quintet

Latin Jazz lovers-and anyone interested in the future of jazz-have extraordinary discoveries in store when the Virginia Arts Festival presents the Yosvany Terry Quintet on April 20.

Born into an illustrious musical family in Cuba, Yosvany Terry is an internationally acclaimed composer, saxophonist, percussionist, bandleader, educator and cultural bearer of the Afro-Cuban tradition. Trained in the European classical tradition and immersed in the rhythms of Afro-Cuban jazz, Mr. Terry grew up in a world filled with music. He moved to New York in 1999, where he was soon welcomed by jazz icons intrigued by his ideas about new directions in Latin Jazz, including Branford Marsalis, Rufus Reid, Dave Douglas, Steve Coleman, Roy Hargrove, Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Taj Mahal, Eddie Palmieri and more. While best known as a blazing improviser, Mr. Terry has gained renown as a composer, bandleader and educator with a string of high-profile awards and appointments, including the prestigious Doris Duke Artist Award, and his installation as Harvard University's Director of Jazz Ensembles and Senior Lecturer on Music.

Mr. Terry's Grammy Award-nominated 2014 album New Throned King reflects his deep Cuban roots, featuring music based on the traditions of the Arará people western Cuba, whose origins lie in the fabled West African Dahomey Kingdom. Critics hailed the recording as "an ambitious and valuable addition to Afro-Cuban jazz. Lyrical, complex and caffeinated, it combines the instrumentation and ground rules of the classic hard-bop quintet with the rhythmic savvy of Afro-Cuban music. This is physical, cerebral and spiritual music, with a lot of stories to tell" (DownBeat).

The Virginia Arts Festival fulfills its strong commitment to arts education by sending visiting performers to area schools. Mr. Terry will work with students at The Governor's School for the Arts before his performance, introducing the students to his brand of Afro-Cuban music and working with the students on improvisatory technique.

Tickets for the Yosvany Terry Quintet are $35 and may be purchased online at www.vafest.org, by phone at 757-282-2822 or by visiting the Virginia Arts Festival box office located at 440 Bank Street in Norfolk between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m., Monday-Friday.

About the Virginia Arts Festival

Since 1997, the Virginia Arts Festival has transformed the cultural scene in southeastern Virginia, presenting great performers from around the world to local audiences and making this historic, recreation-rich region a cultural destination for visitors from across the United States and around the world. The Festival has presented numerous U.S. and regional premieres, and regularly commissions new works of music, dance, and theater from some of today's most influential composers, choreographers and playwrights. The Festival's arts education programs reach tens of thousands of area schoolchildren each year through student matinees, in-school performances, artists' residencies, master classes and demonstrations.