Aruán Ortiz - THE MATRIX

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Aruán Ortiz

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Who I Am & Where I Live:

Name: Aruán Ortiz
City: New York City
Country: United States
Hometown: Santiago de Cuba

My Life

Biographical: Aruán Ortiz is an acclaimed Cuban pianist, award-winning composer, and a producer and educator.

Called “the latest Cuban wunderkind to arrive in the United States” by BET Jazz, this classically trained violinist and pianist from Santiago de Cuba considers himself “a curious person who loves music” and portrays his music as an architectural structure of sounds incorporating contemporary classical music, Afro-Cuban rhythms, and improvisation as primary material for his compositions.

Aruan has received a number of awards including the Doris Duke Artist Impact Award (2014), Artist-in-Residence at Pocantico Center at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (2014), Latin Jazz Corner’s Arranger of the Year (2011) for his contribution on the album, “El Cumbanchero” (Jazzheads) by flutist Mark Weinstein, semifinalist, Jas Hennessy Piano Solo Competition, Montreux, Switzerland (2001), and Best Jazz Interpretation, Festival de Jazz in Vic, Spain (2000).

Since arriving in New York in 2008 to play with the Wallace Roney Quintet, Aruán has made five recordings, all very well received by the critics. Alameda (Fresh Sound, 2010), received four stars in Jazzwise magazine (U.K.), and was reviewed as "a sophisticated outing of modern jazz." This album was also named one of the top jazz CDs of the year in 2010 by numerous jazz magazines and blogs around the world.

Two thousand twelve was a very intense musical year, as Mr. Ortiz released three albums as a leader: the modern jazz effort, Orbiting (Fresh Sound 2012), was featured in Jazzman and Jazznews Magazine, received four stars from Jazzwise Magazine and Jazz Journal in the UK, and was one of the top ten contemporary jazz albums of 2012 according to "Something Else!" webzine; Santiarican Blues Suite (Sunnyside 2012), received four and a half stars from Downbeat Magazine, and was featured on major jazz blogs and magazines worldwide. Bill Milkowski from JazzTimes Magazine recently proclaimed, "These two simultaneous releases herald the arrival of a major new talent."

On his CD, Banned in London (Whirlwind Recordings 2012, released in 2013 in the U.S.), Aruán co-led a Cuban/US collaboration, a powerful quintet, with bassist/composer Michael Janisch featuring saxophonist Greg Osby and Rudy Royston on drums. Their CD was selected one of the best albums of the year (2013) by Downbeat Magazine, and received five stars on BBC Jazz Radio, and four stars in the Jazz Journal, Jazzwise Magazine, Financial Times, and The Guardian in the UK, where it was also on the list of best jazz albums of 2012.

As a composer, Ortiz has received commissions from the Woodwind Quintet Ensemble of Santiago de Cuba; Música de Camara Orchestra in New York City; Oyú Oró Folkloric Dance Company in New York City; YOUME & Milena Zullo Ballet in Rome; José Mateo Ballet Theater in Cambridge, MA; and University of Albany Symphony Orchestra in New York. In late 2013 and early 2014, he composed and directed the score for the upcoming feature film, 'Sin Alas,' to be released in fall 2014.

Ortiz has also played, toured or recorded with Esperanza Spalding, Joe Lovano, Terri Lyne Carrington, Andrew Cyrille, Oliver Lake, Rufus Reid, Henry Grimes, Cindy Blackman-Santana, Don Byron, Lenny White, Greg Osby, and Wallace Roney, among others.

THE MATRIX IS MUSICIAN / ARTIST RECOMMENDATIONS BY THE MOST POWERFUL, SOPHISTICATED & SUBTLE SOFTWARE YET DEVISED:

⇒ the minds of other artists

IT'S BASED IN BAHIA, GROUND ZERO FOR BRAZIL'S SUN-CARONA VIBRANT AFRO-BRAZILIAN CULTURE

⇒ ...rooted in a region called the Recôncavo, analogous in Brazil to the Mississippi Delta in the United States.

THE MATRIX REACHES FROM BRAZIL TO CUBA TO BROOKLYN TO BERLIN TO TOKYO TO TIMBUKTU

⇒ To wherever people want to take it...

IT IS THE NEXT-STEP EVOLUTION OF A SPECIALTY RECORD SHOP

⇒ ...opened in Salvador to showcase magisterial musicians almost completely unknown to the world...many of them living in poverty or close to it and unable to avail themselves of traditional (and costly) means of publicizing.

PRE-BRAZIL — IN NEW YORK CITY — WE "RESCUED" UNPAID ROYALTIES FOR PERFORMERS & COMPOSERS INCLUDING:

⇒ Aretha Franklin, Barbra Streisand, Led Zeppelin, Philip Glass, Mongo Santamaria, Airto Moreira, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Jim Hall, Taj Mahal, Robb Royer of Bread, Speedo & the Cadillacs, and many more! With Speedo's (Earl Carroll) amazing story (kid singing on the streetcorners of Harlem to doo-wop fame to working as a beloved school janitor) I learned (as Quincy Jones had figured out decades before) that greatness and fame are completely independent. The wave repeated here in Brazil with Raimundo Sodré, who went from zero to national fame and back to zero.

HENCE A (and so far the world's only) SMALL WORLD CURATION NETWORK...

⇒ A wave of Exu's cyberwand opening pathways allowing ANY ARTIST — FAMOUS OR NOT — in ANY FIELD — in ANY PLACE in the world — to potentially be reached by ANYBODY from ANYWHERE. (Exu -- eh-SHOO -- is the Afro-Brazilian deity responsible for opening pathways.)

BY WHAT WIZARDRY?

⇒ We've all heard of six degrees of separation, more properly called a small world network. Within six or so steps we can move through a chain of people knowing other people to just about anybody on the planet.

SIMPLY CHANGE "KNOW" TO "RECOMMEND"

⇒ In exactly the same way, step by step we can move through chains of ARTISTS CURATING ARTISTS to to just about any artist on the planet.

LIKE THIS...

⇒ From Quincy Jones we access one of his protégés, stellar young Cuban pianist Alfredo Rodriguez. From Alfredo Rodriguez we access a fabulous multinstrumentalist Alfredo plays with, Munir Hossn. Two more steps and we've reached the above-mentioned Raimundo Sodré, formerly virtually unreachable in Bahia...

Raimundo Sodré Now

Dengo

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DICTATED SILENCE

⇒ Sodré's meteoric major-label career was crushed by the Brazilian dictatorship years ago and he was forced to flee Brazil under threat of death...into a 19 year exile. He became almost impossible to find and hear, even after returning to Brazil.

MUSIC FALLS LIKE RAIN

⇒ But now lines of everbranching interlinked recommendations rise from Bahia to form a (small world) network rounding the planet like the arboreal canopy of a vast Amazonian rainforest. When the dictatorship ground Sodré into the dust, they unwittingly planted a seed.

FROM SODRÉ, A WORLDLINE TO SPLENDID BULE BULE (LEATHER HAT) ABOVE... AND TO OTHERS IN THE CLIP...

⇒ "The time has arrived for these people of color to show their worth ... I want to see Uncle Sam play tambourine so the whole world can samba!"

AND FROM BULE ON...

⇒ ...tendrils twining through urban centers and beautiful backwaters... through New York boroughs, Burkina Faso... County Clare... Cape Town...

THROUGH ARTISTS ACROSS THE BOARD

⇒ ...writers, journalists, photographers, painters, illustrators, architects, choreographers, filmmakers...

IS THE MATRIX AN ALTERNATE REALITY?

⇒ Only if your reality has been defined by corporate mass media. The original meaning of "matrix" is "source", from "mater", Latin for "mother". We're real mothers for ya!

DOES THE MATRIX WATCH YOU?

⇒ Zero surreptitious tracking, data mining and data brokerage per Cambridge Analytica, Facebook, et al.