An Exclusive Double Bill: JERRY GONZALEZ & THE
FORT APACHE BAND AND THE OMAR SOSA QUARTET
RUMBA PARA MONK
Thursday, 10/11/07, 8 pm
Reynolds Theater
$38 • $32 • $5*
Jerry Gonzalez played trumpet with Dizzy Gillespie in the 70s, and his Fort Apache Band—“the best Latin jazz group working,” says the New York Times— is named for the Bronx neighborhood where he grew up. Their 1988 album Rumba Para Monk made their debt to Thelonious explicit, cutting Latin elements into Monk’s compositions and finding the Afro-Caribbean rhythms latent in those famous notes.
For his part, Omar Sosa named his first son “Lonious”— a way of marking his debt to the piano mastermind from Rocky Mount. The pianist from Camagüey’s own skills have roots in his native Cuba and in the Ella Fitzgerald records his father used to spin. Hitting angular phrases with a Monk-like drive, Sosa is a force of his own. He was selected by composer John Adams to perform as part of the inaugural season of Carnegie Hall’s new Zankel Hall.
This exclusive Following Monk double bill brings two
titanic Latin jazz bands together for an evening that testifies
to the way music from North Carolina can move. Gonzalez and Sosa play
together to conclude the show.
Omar Sosa on Monk:
“I started to really love jazz when I found Monk. When I found his
music I say ‘Wow! This is the guy!’ This is
what I expected about music, not only about jazz, but about music, because
it’s freedom. Play whatever you want, no matter what! Because so
many people start thinking ‘OK, this phrase don’t go here.
These changes don’t go here.’ But this is stupid shit, man!”
Jerry Gonzalez and the Fort Apache Band on the web:
www.myspace.com/fortapacheband
Omar Sosa on the web:
Funded, in part, by Mi Gente, Duke University’s Latino Student Organization.