Bio:
Recently nominated for a Grammy for his work on Terence Blanchard's "Breathless", pianist and composer Fabian Almazan found his musical roots as a child in his homeland of Havana where he first became involved in the classical piano tradition. When his parents could not afford to pay for private piano lessons, having migrated to Miami, FL, pianist Conchita Betancourt was gracious enough to impart free lessons for over three years. Thanks to Mrs. Betancourt's exceeding generosity, Fabian was able to audition for the New World School of the Arts High School in Miami, FL where he studied from 1998 to 2002. In 2002 Fabian was selected for the piano chair in the National 2002 Grammy High School Jazz Combo. The following year, Almazan attended the newly up and running Brubeck Institute fellowship program based in northern California where he studied with Mark Levine and performed with Dave Brubeck and Christian McBride. In 2003, Fabian moved to New York City to study with Kenny Barron and Garry Dial at the Manhattan School of Music. During the completion of his bachelor's degree, Almazan immersed himself in the realm of orchestral composition studying instrumentation and orchestration with Mr. Giampaolo Bracali. Under Mr. Bracali's tutelage, Almazan composed several pieces for orchestra and chamber ensembles. In the spring of 2009 Fabian Almazan received a master's degree from Manhattan School of Music, selected as a recipient of the Michael W. Greene Scholarship, studying privately with Jason Moran. Fabian can be heard on several Spike Lee films as well as George Luca’s Red Tails among other films. Most recently, Fabian was selected to participate in the SWR New Jazz Meetings which took place in Germany.
Mr. Almazan was voted #1 Rising Piano Star on the Downbeat Magazine Critics 2014 Poll and was granted the Chamber Music America 2014 NEW Jazz Works commission. Almazan received the Cintas Foundation 2010/11 Brandon Fradd Award in Music Composition, an award that has been granted to many Cuban artists who have gone on to play an influential role in the development of Cuban cultural heritage. Almazan was also selected as one of six composers to participate in the Sundance Composers’ Lab where he studied with such acclaimed film composers as Harry Gregson-Williams, Alan Silvestri, George S. Clinton, Christopher Young, Ed Shearmur and Peter Golub. His solo albums, Personalities, which Fabian Almazan released on his own record label, Biophilia Records, and Rhizome [AritstShare/BlueNote Records] have garnered nationwide critical acclaim, including a glowing review in The New York Times. Interest in Almazan's work was also bolstered by his performances at the historic Village Vanguard in New York City, which have been broadcasted live to a nationwide audience on National Public Radio's Live from the Village Vanguard. Since 2007 Fabian has been the pianist for the Terence Blanchard’s various bands, including the E-Collective which was nominated for a GRAMMY in 2016. Mr. Almazan has toured North and South America, Asia, Africa, Australia and Europe extensively and has had the opportunity to perform with such artists as Linda May Han Oh, Gretchen Parlato, John Hollenbeck, Johnathan Blake, Justin Brown, Mark Guiliana, Dave Douglass, Chris Dingman, David Sanchez and Ambrose Akinmusire among others.
The Recôncavo is an almost invisible center-of-gravity. Circumscribing the Bay of All Saints, this region was landing for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. Not unrelated, it is also birthplace of some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever made. —Sparrow
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers: Personal recording engineer for Prince, inc. "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"... Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory
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 MUSICAL
The Matrix was built below among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced. (that's me left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) ... The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter).