Donald Vega via giant steps through a matrix based in the phenomenon placing most of the 7.8 billion of us within 6 or fewer degrees — steps — of each other...
- Steps from Donald Vega:
I'LL TAKE YOU THERE! ▶
'mātriks / "source" / from "mater", Latin for "mother". We're real mothers for ya!
I'LL TAKE YOU THERE! ▶
- Steps forward by: The Matrix
Who I Am & Where I Live
- Name: Donald Vega
- City: New York City
- Country: United States
- Hometown: Masaya, Nicaragua
My Life & Work
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Bio:
Donald Vega was trained classically in piano in his native Nicaragua. He emigrated to the United States at age 14 and found a musical home with the Colburn School of Performing Arts (CSPA). He began his studies there in classical piano with Teresa de Jong Pombo and Dr. Louis Lepley. Vega began learning the language of jazz from mentor Billy Higgins at The World Stage and continued at CSPA with Jeffrey Lavner, then later with bassist John Clayton at the University of Southern California. He went on to graduate from Manhattan School of Music and The Juilliard School where he studied with piano great, Kenny Barron. Vega currently performs internationally as the pianist for world renowned bassist Ron Carter’s Golden Striker Trio. Mr. Vega also sits on the board of BackCountry Jazz, a non-profit organization which provides music education programs and performances to underprivileged youth.
Vega’s debut album, Tomorrows, was released in 2008 to rave reviews. In his sophomore album, Spiritual Nature (Resonance Records, 2012), he was joined by the regal rhythm tandem of bassist Christian McBride and drummer Lewis Nash. Vega teamed up again with Lewis Nash on his third album, With Respect to Monty, (Resonance Records, 2015) along with Hassan Shakur, the great bassist and former Monty Alexander band member, and long time friend and grammy nominated artist, Anthony Wilson on guitar.
Donald has gone on to record several albums as part of Ron Carter’s Golden Striker Trio. He is also an adjunct professor at both SUNY Purchase and The Juilliard School. Donald is currently working on his fourth album, a tribute to his own immigration story as well as the thousands of migrants impacted by the U.S.’s current immigration policies.
Contact Information
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Management/Booking:
For bookings contact:
Kathy Salem @ Night Is Alive
330-328-7337
www.nightisalive.com
For licensing inquiries:
www.1630music.com
My Media & Markets
- ▶ Twitter: DonaldVegaJazz
- ▶ Instagram: donaldvegajazz
- ▶ Website: http://www.donaldvega.com
- ▶ YouTube Music: http://music.youtube.com/channel/UCEtblkDRZ69UHLQrsSxC9lg
- ▶ Spotify: http://open.spotify.com/album/3b6ihGywZCyLJ1Ptb3MIKY
- ▶ Spotify 2: http://open.spotify.com/album/1yUxxe87h4dyLCoJsJKsi8
- ▶ Spotify 3: http://open.spotify.com/album/0QiL7PYxUZlkTqrk45JCVf
My Instruction
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Lessons/Workshops:
JAZZ Piano Lessons:
In Person OR Via Skype
To enhance improvisation and performance techniques;
To prepare for a music school audition or piano competition;
Or to simply learn the fundamentals of jazz. - Instruction: http://www.donaldvega.com/lessons
The world's artistry via giant steps through a matrix based in the phenomenon placing most of the 7.8 billion of us within 6 or fewer degrees — steps — of each other ...
... a project conceived and built in the fertile, fecund and atavistic ground zero of Bahia, Brazil initially for the discoverability of this singular region's dispossessed genius.
All explained in the window immediately below. Followed — beneath this window — by scores of magnificent artists, each leading to myriads more artists/categories. Inside this window also may be found our Brazilian record store radio, named by British journal The Guardian as one of 10 of the Best Radio Stations Around the World!
IF YOU CAN'T STAND THE HEAT
Brazil is not a European nation. It's not a North American nation. It's not an East Asian nation. It straddles -- jungle and desert and dense urban centers -- both the equator and the Tropic of Capricorn. It absorbed over ten times the number of African slaves taken to the United States of America, and much of its aboriginal population was absorbed into the general population-at-large. Its people have lived under oligarchy, plutocracy, dictatorships and massive corruption, with elements of these still strongly entrenched today.
But!
Brazil has buzz...not the shallow buzz of a fashionable moment...but the deep buzz of a population which in spite of -- or perhaps because of -- the tough slog through life they've been allotted by humanity's dregs-in-fine-linen, have chosen not to simply pull themselves along but to lift their voices in song and their bodies in dance...to eat well and converse well and much and to wring the joy out of the day-to-day happenings and small pleasures of life which are so often set aside or ignored in the European, North American, and East Asian nations.
For this Brazil has a genius perhaps unparalleled in all other countries and societies, a genius which thrives alongside peeling paint and holes in the streets and roads, under bad organization by the powers-that-be, both civil and governmental, under a constant rain of societal indignities...
Which is all to say that if you don't know Brazil and you're expecting any semblance of order, progress and light, you will certainly find the light! And the buzz of a people who for generations have responded to privation at many different levels by somehow rising above it all.
Raimundo Sodré, in a conversation ranging from New Orleans to Harlem and the South Side of Chicago ... through Appalachia and Irish villages and Russian shtetls and the unofficial symbol of Brazil's Bahian-born national music (the pandeiro) almost certainly having arrived in Brazil in the hands of Sephardic Jews (including conversos) fleeing the Inquisition, once remarked: "Where there's misery, there's music!"
A pandeirista on the roof. And it's not just music. And it's not just Brazil.
