Worldwinds: ALJO + Ayodele, Mezclada, Music From The Sole

The Afro Latin Jazz Alliance at Chelsea Factory

Worldwinds:
ALJO + Ayodele, Mezclada and Music From The Sole

Friday, March 24, 2023 at 8:00PM
*pre-show artist conversation at 7:00PM

Saturday, March 25, 2023 at 8:00PM

Performance time: 100 minutes, with a 15-minute intermission

Arturo O’Farrill & the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra

and special guests:

Ayodele Casel

Mezclada Dance Company

Music From The Sole

Choreography | Ayodele Casel, Joel Aguilera & Leo Sandoval

“Worldwinds” is a dynamic collaborative performance bringing together Arturo O’Farrill and his multi-Grammy winning Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra (ALJO) with three young choreographers and companies that are carving out space for themselves in the Dance World. Over the past several years, O’Farrill has forged artistic collaborations with noted choreographers and dance companies, including an ongoing collaboration with Ayodele Casel, one of this evening’s featured guests.  The other two companies are new collaborators and the show represents Arturo and the ALJO once again pushing boundaries of style and medium. The program will feature both classics from Arturo and the ALJO’s repertoire paired with choreographies created specifically for these works, as well as several new arrangements and choreographies composed for this program.


About Arturo O'Farrill:
Arturo O'Farrill—pianist, composer, and educator—was born in Mexico and grew up in New York City. Arturo’s professional career began with the Carla Bley Band and continued as a solo performer with a wide spectrum of artists including Dizzy Gillespie, Lester Bowie, Wynton Marsalis, and Harry Belafonte. In 2007, he founded the Afro Latin Jazz Alliance as a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the performance, education, and preservation of Afro Latin music. In December 2010, Arturo traveled with the original Chico O’Farrill Afro Cuban Jazz Orchestra to Cuba, returning his father’s musicians to his homeland. He continues to travel to Cuba regularly as an informal Cultural Ambassador, working with Cuban musicians, dancers, and students, bringing local musicians from Cuba to the U.S. and American musicians to Cuba. 

An avid supporter of all the arts, Arturo has performed with Ballet Hispanico and the Malpaso Dance Company, for whom he has written three ballets. In addition, the Alvin Ailey Dance Company has in its repertoire a ballet entitled Open Door, choreographed by Ron Brown to several of Arturo’s compositions and recordings. Ron Brown’s own Evidence Dance Company commissioned Arturo to compose New Conversations, which premiered in the summer of 2018 at Jacob’s Pillow in Becket, MA. 

Arturo’s well-reviewed and highly-praised “Afro-Latin Jazz Suite” from the album CUBA: The Conversation Continues (Motema) took the 2016 GRAMMY Award for Best Instrumental Composition and the 2016 Latin GRAMMY Award for Best Latin Jazz Album. His powerful Three Revolutions from the album Familia - Tribute to Chico and Bebo, was the 2018 GRAMMY Award winner for Best Instrumental Composition, his sixth award in that category. Arturo’s album Four Questions (ZOHO) is the first to embody all original compositions, including the title track which features the brilliant orator Dr. Cornel West. This album won a GRAMMY in 2021. His most recent album with the ALJO, Fandango at the Wall in New York, was awarded this year’s Grammy for Best Latin Jazz Album.

Arturo is Professor of Global Jazz Studies and Assistant Dean for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He has been honored as a Steinway Artist for many years, and is now a Blue Note Records recording artist. 


About the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra:
The multi-GRAMMY-Award-winning Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra (ALJO) blends the drama of big band jazz, the culture of Latin music, and the virtuosity of 18 of the world’s most accomplished musicians. Two decades of critically-acclaimed live performances across the world have established the ALJO as the standard-bearer of big band Latin jazz. ALJO’s innovative repertoire pushes the genre into the future, reflecting O’Farrill’s dual sensibilities of contemporary and improvisational jazz—honed by his work with legends of the genre such as Carla Bley, Lester Bowie, and Dizzy Gillespie—with the  Latin Jazz traditions pioneered by his father, the legendary Chico O’Farrill. ALJO has collaborated with, and performed the compositions of, noted artists including Randy Weston, Carla Bley, Vijay Iyer, Antonio Sánchez, Miguel Zenón, Dafnis Prieto, Letieres Leite, Lionel  Loueke, Malika Zarra and many others, including Arturo O’Farrill himself.


About Ayodele Casel:
Ayodele Casel, a Doris Duke Artist in the dance category, is an award-winning and critically acclaimed tap dancer and choreographer named one of the New York Times’ “biggest breakout stars of 2019.” Born in The Bronx and raised in Puerto Rico, her practice centers highly narrative works rooted in expressions of selfhood, culture and legacy.

Her projects include her concert and Bessie Award-winning film Chasing Magic, her one-woman show While I Have the Floor, and her theatrical and film series Diary of a Tap Dancer. She serves as a tap choreographer for the Broadway revival of Funny Girl, which garnered her a 2022 Drama Desk nomination for Outstanding Choreography. A frequent New York City Center collaborator, she created an interactive show for their inaugural On the Move five-borough tour and is one of their 2023 featured “Artists at the Center.” Her collaboration with Grammy award-winning Latin jazz composer and pianist Arturo O’Farrill is hailed by the New York Times as “next level” and “thrilling.”

Casel was a 2019-2020 fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, an artist-in-residence at Harvard University and Little Island, and is the recipient of a United States Artist Fellowship and Hoofer and Flo-Bert award. In 2021, Casel was depicted on a U.S. Postal Service Forever Stamp celebrating tap dance.


About Mezclada Dance Company:
Mezclada Dance Company is dedicated to celebrating diversity through mixing cultures and dance styles to create harmonious, original, and widely relatable blends of dance. Mezclada also aims to educate and positively represent these cultures and artforms within in its performances, outreach, and projects. Through global experiences in Albania, China, Mexico, Montenegro, USA, and many more, the dancers of Mezclada Dance Company bring their rich and global experiences to create work that represent the diversity of arts audiences.


About Music From The Sole:
Music From The Sole is a tap dance and live music company that celebrates tap's Afro-diasporic roots, particularly its connections to Afro-Brazilian dance and music, and its lineage to forms like house dance and passinho (Brazilian funk). Led by Brazilian dancer/choreographer Leonardo Sandoval and bassist/ composer Gregory Richardson, their work embraces tap’s unique nature as a blend of sound and movement, incorporating wide-ranging influences like samba, passinho, Afro-Cuban, jazz, and house. As part of its mission to bring tap, America's original vernacular dance, to new audiences, the company appears as both a dance company and percussive-led band at dance and music venues, including recently at Harlem Stage, Lincoln Center, Jacob’s Pillow, The Yard, Caramoor Jazz Festival, Bryant Park, and the Guggenheim. They partner frequently with organizations like the National Dance Institute and Lincoln Center Education, engaging with communities across NYC and beyond through dance and music activities.


About the Afro Latin Jazz Alliance:
The Afro Latin Jazz Alliance (ALJA) produces performances, educates about, and preserves the music of all the Americas, emanating from African and indigenous roots, through the entry point of jazz. ALJA embraces its mission with a commitment to social justice, equity, inclusion, and equality of all cultures.

Health and Safety Protocols:

• Masks are optional for this event.

• While Chelsea Factory strongly recommends vaccination against COVID-19, proof of vaccination is not currently required for audience entrance to performances and public programs.

Click here for our full Health and Safety Protocols.