Four-time JUNO Award winner, two-time Grammy nominee, and Officer of the Order of Canada, soprano saxophonist/flautist Jane Bunnett is known for her creative integrity, improvisational daring and courageous artistry. Her exploration of Afro-Cuban melodies expresses the universality of music and her ability to embrace and showcase the rhythms and culture of Cuba has been groundbreaking. She has toured the world bringing her own special sound to numerous jazz festivals, displaying her versatility as a flutist, saxophone player and pianist. As an educator, spokesperson and social activist, she remains unafraid to explore uncharted territory in her quest for excellence. Bunnett has turned her bands into showcases for the finest talent from Canada, the U.S.and Cuba. She was recently honoured with an appointment to the Order of Canada....
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Four-time JUNO Award winner, two-time Grammy nominee, and Officer of the Order of Canada, soprano saxophonist/flautist Jane Bunnett is known for her creative integrity, improvisational daring and courageous artistry. Her exploration of Afro-Cuban melodies expresses the universality of music and her ability to embrace and showcase the rhythms and culture of Cuba has been groundbreaking. She has toured the world bringing her own special sound to numerous jazz festivals, displaying her versatility as a flutist, saxophone player and pianist. As an educator, spokesperson and social activist, she remains unafraid to explore uncharted territory in her quest for excellence. Bunnett has turned her bands into showcases for the finest talent from Canada, the U.S.and Cuba. She was recently honoured with an appointment to the Order of Canada.
Havana native Hilario Duran is well known as one of the great Cuban pianists. In the 1980s he joined Arturo Sandoval’s band as composer, arranger, producer and pianist; it was a collaboration that saw him often sharing stages with musicians such as Dizzy Gillespie and Michel Legrand. Duran toured throughout Latin American and Europe with his own group, Perspectiva, for several years, a period during which he also played piano on Jane Bunnett’s Juno Award-winning spirits of Havana recording. In 1995, he decided to pursue a solo career, releasing the first of many successful recordings the following year. As leader of the Hilario Duran Latin Jazz Big Band, he was nominated for a Grammy Award for best Latin Jazz Album in 2007 for “From the Heart” featuring Paquito D’Rivera. Duran is the recipient of 3 Juno Awards and over a dozen National Jazz Awards as well as the prestigious Chico O’Farrill Lifetime Achievement Award.
Born in Havana, Cuba, in 1921, NEA Jazz Master Candido Camero first began making music as a young child, beating rhythms on empty condensed milk cans in place of bongos. He worked for six years with the CMQ Radio Orchestra and at the famed Cabaret Tropicana. He came to the United States in 1946 with the dance team Carmen and Rolando, and very soon after was playing with Billy Taylor, who wrote in 1954, “I have not heard anyone who even approaches the wonderful balance between jazz and Cuban elements that Candido demonstrates.” By the early 1950s, Camero was a featured soloist with the Stan Kenton Orchestra, with whom he toured the U.S. playing three congas (at a time when other congueros were playing only one) in addition to a cowbell and guiro (a fluted gourd played with strokes from a stick). He created another unique playing style by tuning his congas to specific pitches so that he could play melodies like a pianist. He became one of the best known congueros in the country, appearing on such television shows as the Ed Sullivan Show and the Jackie Gleason Show. He has recorded and performed with seemingly everybody in the jazz field, including such luminaries as Tony Bennett, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Lionel Hampton, Slide Hampton, Charles Mingus, Wes Montgomery, Gerry Mulligan, Charlie Parker, Sonny Rollins, and Clark Terry. Among his many awards are the Latin Jazz USA Lifetime Achievement Award (2001) and a special achievement award from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers as a “Legend of Jazz” (2005).
Thursday, Friday and Saturday November 6, 7 and 8
Music Starts at 9pm
Music Charge $20.00 (Thursday); $25.00 (Friday/Saturday)
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