César Orozco
This Brazilian cultural matrix positions César Orozco globally...
Curation
CURATION
-
from this page:
by Matrix
The Integrated Global Creative Economy
-
Name:
César Orozco
-
City/Place:
New York City
-
Country:
United States
Life & Work
-
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
-
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)
The Integrated Global Creative Economy (we invented the concept) uncoils from Brazil's sprawling Indigenous, African, Sephardic and then Ashkenazic, Arabic, European, Asian cultural matrix... concatenating branches of a virtual rainforest tree rooted in Bahia, canopy spreading to embrace the entire planet...
Ex Terra Brasilis
A starting point for this project was the culture born in Brazil's quilombos (in Angola a "quilombo" is a village; in Brazil it is a village either founded by Africans or Afro-Brazilians who had escaped slavery, or — as in the case of São Francisco do Paraguaçu above — occupied by such after abandonment by the ruling class). Below Milton Nascimento sings "Ony Saruê" for the deity Oxalá, from his Misso dos Quilombos (Mass for the Quilombos)...
...theme music for this Brazilian Matrix, from an Afro-Brazilian Mass by
From inside this Matrix, all creators-creative entities everywhere — empowered by the mathematics of network theory — become potentially discoverable by all people worldwide. Go straight to one of the (randomly selected) creators-creative entities below to see how their Matrix Page — information and media, outgoing and incoming curation — works (reload to feature other artists/creators), or find out below the black line below what unsung (metaphorically only) brilliance this is all about:
More on these profound incubators of Afro-Brazilian culture at:
Os Quilombos da Bahia
The Quilombos of Bahia
There are certain countries, the names of which fire the popular imagination. Brazil is one of them; an amalgam of primitive and sophisticated, jungle and elegance, luscious jazz harmonics — there’s no other place like it in the world. And while Rio de Janeiro, or its fame anyway, tends toward the sophisticated end of the spectrum, Bahia bends toward the atavistic…
It’s like a trick of the mind’s light (I suppose), but standing on beach or escarpment in Salvador and looking out across the Baía de Todos os Santos to the great Recôncavo, and mindful of what happened there (and here; the Bahian Recôncavo was final port-of-call for more enslaved human beings than any other place throughout the entirety of mankind’s existence on this planet ... in the past it extended into what is now urban Salvador), one must be led to the inevitable conclusion that one is in a place unique to history, and to the present:
Brazil absorbed over ten times the number of enslaved Africans taken to the United States of America, and is a repository of African deities (and their music) now largely forgotten in their lands of origin.
Brazil was a refuge (of sorts) for Sephardim fleeing an Inquisition which followed them across the Atlantic (that unofficial symbol of Brazil’s national music — the pandeiro — was almost certainly brought to Brazil by these people).
Across the parched savannas of the interior of Brazil’s culturally fecund nordeste/northeast (where wizard Hermeto Pascoal was born in Lagoa da Canoa — Lagoon of the Canoe — and raised in Olho d’Águia — Eye of the Eagle), much of Brazil’s aboriginal population was absorbed into a caboclo/quilombola culture punctuated by the Star of David.
Three cultures — from three continents — running for their lives, their confluence forming an unprecedented fourth. Pandeirista on the roof.
That's where this Matrix begins:
Wolfram MathWorld
The idea is simple, powerful, and egalitarian: To propagate for them, the Matrix must propagate for all. Most in the world are within six degrees of us. The concept of a "small world" network (see Wolfram above) applies here, placing artists from the Recôncavo and the sertão, from Salvador... from Brooklyn, Berlin and Mombassa... musicians, writers, filmmakers... clicks (recommendations) away from their peers worldwide.
Recent Visitors Map
Great culture is great power.
And in a small world great things are possible.
Alicia Svigals
"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
"We appreciate you including Kamasi in the matrix, Sparrow."
—Banch Abegaze (LOS ANGELES): manager, Kamasi Washington
"Thanks! It looks great!....I didn't write 'Cantaloupe Island' though...Herbie Hancock did! Great Page though, well done! best, Randy"
"Very nice! Thank you for this. Warmest regards and wishing much success for the project! Matt"
—Son of Jimmy Garrison (bass for John Coltrane, Bill Evans...); plays with Herbie Hancock and other greats...
I opened the shop in Salvador, Bahia in 2005 in order to create an outlet to the wider world for magnificent Brazilian musicians.
David Dye & Kim Junod for NPR found us (above), and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (he's a huge jazz fan), David Byrne, Oscar Castro-Neves... Spike Lee walked past the place while I was sitting on the stoop across the street drinking beer and listening to samba from the speaker in the window...
But we weren't exactly easy for the world-at-large to get to. So in order to extend the place's ethos I transformed the site associated with it into a network wherein Brazilian musicians I knew would recommend other Brazilian musicians, who would recommend others...
And as I anticipated, the chalky hand of God-as-mathematician intervened: In human society — per the small-world phenomenon — most of the billions of us on earth are within some 6 or fewer degrees of each other. Likewise, within a network of interlinked artists as I've described above, most of these artists will in the same manner be at most a handful of steps away from each other.
So then, all that's necessary to put the Brazilians within possible purview of the wide wide world is to include them among a wide wide range of artists around that world.
If, for example, Quincy Jones is inside the matrix, then anybody on his page — whether they be accessing from a campus in L.A., a pub in Dublin, a shebeen in Cape Town, a tent in Mongolia — will be close, transitable steps away from Raymundo Sodré, even if they know nothing of Brazil and are unaware that Sodré sings/dances upon this planet. Sodré, having been knocked from the perch of fame and ground into anonymity by Brazil's dictatorship, has now the alternative of access to the world-at-large via recourse to the vast potential of network theory.
...to the degree that other artists et al — writers, researchers, filmmakers, painters, choreographers...everywhere — do also. Artificial intelligence not required. Real intelligence, yes.
Years ago in NYC (I've lived here in Brazil for 32 years now) I "rescued" unpaid royalties (performance & mechanical) for artists/composers including Barbra Streisand, Aretha Franklin, Mongo Santamaria, Jim Hall, Clement "Coxsone" Dodd (for his rights in Bob Marley compositions; Clement was Bob's first producer), Led Zeppelin, Ray Barretto, Philip Glass and many others. Aretha called me out of the blue vis-à-vis money owed by Atlantic Records. Allen Klein (managed The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Ray Charles) called about money due the estate of Sam Cooke. Jerry Ragovoy (Time Is On My Side, Piece of My Heart) called just to see if he had any unpaid money floating around out there (the royalty world was a shark-filled jungle, to mangle metaphors, and I doubt it's changed).
But the pertinent client (and friend) in the present context is Earl "Speedo" Carroll, of The Cadillacs. Earl went from doo-wopping on Harlem streetcorners to chart-topping success to working as a custodian at PS 87 elementary school on the west side of Manhattan. Through all of this he never lost what made him great.
Greatness and fame are too often conflated. The former should be accessible independently of the latter.
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.
Across the creative universe... For another list, reload page.
This list is random, and incomplete. Reload the page for another list.
For a complete list of everybody inside, tap TOTAL below:
TOTAL
Susan Rogers
Julian Lloyd Webber
Clarice Assad
Kamasi Washington
Randy Brecker
Matt Garrison
RÁDIO MATRIX