CURATION
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from this page:
by Matrix
Network Node
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Name:
César Orozco
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City/Place:
New York City
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Country:
United States
Life & Work
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Bio:
César Orozco is a prolific Cuban/Venezuelan pianist, violinist, composer, arranger, producer, and educator. After developing an important career in Venezuela, Mr. Orozco moved to the United States in 2012 and enrolled with a full tuition Assistantship to The Peabody Institute of John Hopkins University in Baltimore, where he earned a Graduate Performance Diploma (GPD) in 2014. Since relocating to the New York tri-state area in 2015, Mr. Orozco has become an in-demand pianist as a sideman as well as a leader of his own projects. Some of the artists he has worked with include Paquito D’Rivera, Pedrito Martinez, Gary Thomas, Yosvany Terry, Flavio Sala, Luisito Quintero, Gilberto Santa Rosa, Luis Enrique, Itai Kriss, Troy Roberts, Paul Bollenback, Jeremy Warren, and Giovanni Hidalgo just to name a few. Orozco has developed an innovative approach to a fusion of Venezuelan and Cuban traditional music with Jazz along with his project Kamarata Jazz. He has appeared in more than 70 albums and his recordings as a leader include “Son con Pajarillo” (2007), “Ebano y Marfil” (2008), “Orozcojam” (Guataca, 2010), which was awarded for Best vocal/Instrumental album at Cubadisco 2012 in Havana, Cuba, “No Limits for Tumbao” (Alfi Records, 2015) and the latest one “Stringwise”, a duo with the outstanding Venezuelan Cuatro player Jorge Glem. He is also a recipient of a DownBeat Magazine's 2014 Student Music Award for Original Composition (Orozcojam) Small Ensemble Outstanding Performance.
Throughout his career, Orozco has toured extensively across the United States, Europe, Latin America and Australia, participating in some of the most renowned music festivals around the world such as the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland, the Cervantino Festival in Mexico, and the Jazz al Parque in Bogota, Colombia. As a bandleader, he has performed at venues such as Blues Alley, Twins Jazz, and the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, Bolivar Hall in London, the Bird's Basement Jazz Club in Melbourne, Australia, the Bimhuis Jazz Club in Amsterdam, Subrosa, The Zinc Bar, Terraza 7, and the Fat Cat in New York City among others.
Mr. Orozco has written music for a wide range of ensembles and instrumentations, including but not limited to symphony orchestras, big bands, salsa combos, string quartets, string quintets, and brass quintets. He has been commissioned by the Baltimore School for the Arts, the Army Blues Band in Washington DC, the Chamber String Orchestra from the MCYO organization at Strathmore in Maryland, The Netherlands Blazers Ensemble (NBE), RaícesJazz Orchestra from Miami FL, The Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela, and the HR-Big Band, also named Frankfurt Radio Big Band. Within the musical theater field, his credits as a composer, music director, and/or arranger include the Venezuelan musicals "Orinoco" and "Venezuela Viva" (with more than 100 international performances), the autobiographical monologue "Las Ciudades Que Soy" starred and written by the recognized Cuban actress Beatriz Valdez, and "La UltimaPartida" (The Final Draw), a play with live improvised Jazz piano directed by Monica Lopez-Gonzalez which was premiered at the Baltimore Theater Project in 2014.
Orozco was born in Cuba in 1980 and earned a degree in Violin Performance and Ensemble Conducting from the National School of Arts in Havana, Cuba in 1998. The same year, he traveled to Venezuela after accepting an invitation from the Carabobo Symphony Orchestra as a violinist. In Venezuela, Mr. Orozco performed and/or recorded with some of the most important local artists, including Guaco, Rafael “El Pollo” Brito, Andres Briceño, Maria Teresa Chacín, Soledad Bravo, Kiara, Karina, Frank Quintero, Aquiles Báez, Ilan Chester, Orlando Poleo, Gerardo Rosales, Alfredo Naranjo, Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra, Carabobo Symphony Orchestra, Pablo Gil, Simón Díaz and flautist Huáscar Barradas among many others. He also served as a Professor of Jazz Piano, Harmony, and Ensembles for more than three years at the National Experimental University of the Arts in Caracas.
Besides having a very busy performing career, Mr. Orozco is currently an active clinician and educator. He has taught lectures and master classes at some of the most prestigious institutions in the United States such as the Baltimore School for the Arts, Loyola University (Baltimore, MD), Berklee College of Music (Boston, MA), Salem State University, (Boston, MA), and the “New York Arts Program” (NY). He also has his private studio in River Edge, NJ and is faculty at Corlears School in Manhattan, NY.
More
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Quotes, Notes & Etc.
“César Orozco manages to make the best combination between Cuban, Jazz and Venezuelan music I ever heard”.
- Paquito D’Rivera
Clips (more may be added)
I created this matrix so the world could discover elemental cultural genius here in Bahia: João do Boi (rest in power), Roberto Mendes, Raymundo Sodré and magisterial others. To make these artists discoverable worldwide though, there's a catch: The matrix must encompass so far as possible ALL CREATORS EVERYWHERE.
The Integrated Global Creative Economy, uncoiling from this sprawling Indigenous, African, Sephardic and then Ashkenazic, Arabic, European, Asian cultural matrix.
The mathematics of the small world phenomenon transforming the creative universe into a creative village wherein all are connected by short pathways to all.
Tap the crosses on somebody's Matrix Page to recommend that person for that category.
(Crosses visible when you are logged in)
The crosses will turn green.
That person/category will appear in your My Curation & Recommendations.
You will appear in that person's Incoming Curation and Recommendations.
You and the person you are recommending will be pulled by mathematical gravity to within DISCOVERABLE distance of EVERYBODY ELSE INSIDE the Matrix.
In a small world great things are possible.
"Thanks, this is a brilliant idea!!"
—Alicia Svigals (NEW YORK CITY): Apotheosis of klezmer violinists
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers (BOSTON): Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory ... Former personal recording engineer for Prince; "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"
"Dear Sparrow, Many thanks for this – I am touched!"
—Julian Lloyd Webber (LONDON): Premier cellist in UK; brother of Andrew (Evita, Jesus Christ Superstar, Cats, Phantom of the Opera...)
"This is super impressive work ! Congratulations ! Thanks for including me :)))"
—Clarice Assad (RIO DE JANEIRO/CHICAGO): Pianist and composer with works performed by Yo Yo Ma and orchestras around the world
Salvador is our base. If you plan to visit Bahia, there are some things you should probably know and you should first visit:
www.salvadorbahiabrazil.com
Conceived under a Spiritus Mundi ranging from the quilombos and senzalas of Cachoeira and Santo Amaro to Havana and the provinces of Cuba to the wards of New Orleans to the South Side of Chicago to the sidewalks of Harlem to the townships of South Africa to the villages of Ireland to the Roma camps of France and Belgium to the Vienna of Beethoven to the shtetls of Eastern Europe...*
Sodré
*...in conversation with Raymundo Sodré, who summed up the irony in this sequence by opining for the ages: "Where there's misery, there's music!" Hence A Massa, anthem for the trod-upon folk of Brazil, which blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south until Sodré was silenced, threatened with death and forced into exile...
And hence a platform whereupon all creators tend to accessible proximity to all other creators, irrespective of degree of fame, location, or the censor.
Matrix Ground Zero is the Recôncavo, bewitching and bewitched, contouring the resplendent Bay of All Saints (end of clip below, before credits), absolute center of terrestrial gravity for the disembarkation of enslaved human beings (and for the sublimity these people created), the bay presided over by Brazil's ineffable Black Rome (seat of the Integrated Global Creative Economy* and where Bule Bule is seated below, around the corner from where we built this matrix as an extension of our record shop).
Assis Valente's (of Santo Amaro, Bahia) "Brasil Pandeiro" filmed by Betão Aguiar
Betão Aguiar
("Black Rome" is an appellation per Caetano, via Mãe Aninha of Ilê Axé Opô Afonjá.)
*Darius Mans holds a Ph.D. in Economics from MIT, and lives between Washington D.C. and Salvador da Bahia.
Between 2000 and 2004 he served as the World Bank’s Country Director for Mozambique and Angola. In that capacity, Darius led a team which generated $150 million in annual lending to Mozambique, including support for public private partnerships in infrastructure which catalyzed over $1 billion in private investment.
Darius was an economist with the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, where he worked closely with the U.S. Treasury and the IMF to establish a framework to avoid debt repudiation and to restructure private commercial debt in Brazil and Chile.
He taught Economics at the University of Maryland and was a consultant to KPMG on infrastructure projects in Latin America.
Replete with Brazilian greatness, but we listened to Miles Davis and Jimmy Cliff in there too; visitors are David Dye & Kim Junod for NPR/WXPN
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay (they paid).
Matrix founding creators are behind "one of 10 of the best (radios) around the world", per The Guardian.
This list is random, and incomplete. Reload the page for another list.
Pardal/Sparrow
Ex Terra Brasilis
Wolfram MathWorld
UNIVERSAL
Alicia Svigals
Susan Rogers
Julian Lloyd Webber
Clarice Assad
Luciano Calazans
Kamasi Washington
Randy Brecker
Gustavo Caribé
J Velloso
Lázaro Ramos
Fernando Guerreiro
Maria Marighella
Russell Okung
Bule Bule
Caetano Veloso
RÁDIO MATRIX