Bio:
A naturalized US citizen, Peñas was born in Barcelona to a family where traditional, folk, and flamenco music was loved and ever-present. His maternal grandfather was a trumpet player who occasionally played with Xavier Cugat’s orchestra when it was in town. Peñas’ first years of study were devoted to classical music, but he later developed a fascination with jazz and decided to dedicate his career to this genre in the US, where he now lives with his wife. This decision led to this moment in his musical career, a road that crosses cultures and creative ideas, the main genre melded by different grooves. His projects speak to this; Peñas has expanded his focus to incorporate diverse rhythms and styles.
Quotes, Notes & Etc.
As a performer, Peñas has released four jazz albums with Grammy winners Esperanza Spalding, Gil Goldstein, and Paquito D’Rivera, among many others. He regularly performs with musicians such as harmonist Gregory Maret and trumpeter Jason Palmer in venues across the US, including Cabaret Theater at the Jazz Appreciation Month Series by the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, the Mansion at Strathmore Performing Art Center, Kennedy Center, Atlas Performing Arts Center, the Decatur House, the National Center for White House History, Jazz at Lincoln Center at Dizzy’s Jazz Coca-Cola, Chicago’s Old Town, Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia Museum of Art, BAMcafé, BargeMusic, and Burlington Jazz Festival, VT. In Cuba, he has performed at Teatro Martí and at the International Jazz Plaza Festival. Additionally, he performs in clubs on the east coast, such as The Sidedoor, Blue Note, 55 Bar, Bar Next Door, and while in Europe he performs at the Parisian Duc Des Lombard jazz club and at the Concert Hall Jamboree in Barcelona.
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).