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Paquito D'Rivera

Paquito D'Rivera is an NEA Jazz Master

Paquito D’Rivera - alto and soprano saxophone, clarinet, bandleader, recording artist, composer.

Paquito D’Rivera is a stellar example of the marriage of Latin American music and jazz. A Grammy winning, best selling artist with more than thirty solo albums to his credit, he is equally luminous on the soprano or alto saxophones, and clarinet. He is a genuine musical sophisticate with a broad span of endeavors and achievements.

Born on the island of Cuba June 4, 1948, Paquito D’Rivera began his career as a child prodigy. A restless musical genius during his teen years, Mr. D’Rivera created various original and ground-breaking musical ensembles. As a founding member of the Orquesta Cubana de Musica Moderna, he directed that group for two years, while at the same time playing both the clarinet and saxophone with the Cuban National Symphony Orchestra. He eventually went on to premier several works by notable Cuban composers with the same orchestra.

Additionally, he was a founding member and co-director of the innovative musical ensemble Irakere. With its explosive mixture of jazz, rock, classical and traditional Cuban music never before heard, Irakere toured extensively throughout America and Europe, won several Grammy nominations (1979, 1980) and a Grammy (1979).

Paquito D'Rivera's first recognition as a solo artist by the Grammy Recording Academy came in 1996 with the highly acclaimed recording Portraits of Cuba. Since then, Mr. D'Rivera has received numerous recognitions as an artist and composer.

Recently, Mr. D’Rivera received his 8th Grammy for Best Classical Recording for the recording Riberas with the Buenos Aires String Quartet, and is a recipient of the National Medal for the Arts. Additionally, D'Rivera was named one of the 2005 NEA (National Endowment for the Arts) Jazz Masters and most recently, he was honored in March 2007 with the Living Jazz Legend Award in a ceremony at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC.

He also won a Grammy for Best Instrumental Composition 2004 for his “Merengue” as performed by the distinguished cellist Yo-Yo Ma. In both 2004 and 2006, the Jazz Journalists Association honored Mr. D’Rivera as the Clarinetist of the Year.

The National Hispanic Academy of Media Arts and Sciences paid tribute to Mr. D'Rivera with their Annual Achievement in Music Award. In May of 2003, he received a Doctorate Honoris Causa in Music, from the Berklee School of Music. In addition to his awards and recognitions, Paquito D'Rivera is the first artist to win Latin Grammys in both Classical and Latin Jazz categories (2003), for Historia del Soldado (L'Histoire du Soldat) and Brazilian Dreams with the New York Voices. In 2000, D'Rivera's Tropicana Nights received a Grammy. That same year, he received a nomination in the classical category for his Music of Two Worlds, featuring compositions by Schubert, Brahms, Guastavino, Villa Lobos, and Mr. D’Rivera himself. A 2001 Latin Grammy was awarded for his Quintet’s recording of Live at the Blue Note along with a nomination in the Classical Crossover category for The Clarinetist Vol. I. In 2002, he won again as a guest artist on the Bebo Valdes Trio's recording El Arte Del Sabor.

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Album Review

Hilario Duran: Cry Me A River

Read "Cry Me A River" reviewed by Pierre Giroux


Hilario Durán is a renowned Cuban-Canadian jazz pianist and composer known for contributing to Latin jazz. He does not release big band efforts often, but with the release of Cry Me A River, he has reconstituted his Latin Jazz Big Band to take us on an extraordinary musical journey, effortlessly blending myriad genres into his singular style. Durán's Afro-Caribbean cultural attachment informs the nine works of both originals and covers in this outing, resulting in a unique tapestry of sound. ...

7
Album Review

Diego Urcola Quartet: El Duelo

Read "El Duelo" reviewed by Mark Sullivan


The cover of this album shows Diego Urcola (trumpet, flugelhorn) and Paquito D'Rivera (alto saxophone, clarinet) back-to-back, as if about to engage in the titular duel. But the sound is that of two veteran players jointly taking a leap into the unknown. A quartet without piano is an unusual setting for both of them. D'Rivera's liner notes mention Gerry Mulligan's quartet with Chet Baker (represented by “ I Know, Don't Know How"), but Ornette Coleman's quartet is another, more surprising ...

1
Live Review

Paquito D’Rivera Quintet at the Regattabar

Read "Paquito D’Rivera Quintet at the Regattabar" reviewed by Nat Seelen


Paquito D'Rivera Quintet Regattabar Cambridge, MA October 19, 2018 For over four decades, Paquito D'Rivera has been an institution in the global music scene. Flitting between jazz, latin, and classical music since he was a boy studying at the Havana Conservatory of Music, he's logged thousands of miles, more than fifty albums as leader, and fourteen GRAMMY awards (He's won in both the Latin Jazz and Classical categories. In the same year. ...

3
Live Review

Paquito D'Rivera at Mount Vernon Country Club

Read "Paquito D'Rivera at Mount Vernon Country Club" reviewed by Geoff Anderson


Paquito D'Rivera Mount Vernon Country Club Golden, Colorado February 27, 2015 Jazz. Pass it on. That was a big part of what happened Friday night at the Mount Vernon Country Club in the foothills west of jny: Denver. National Endowment of the Arts Jazz Master and multiple Grammy winner Paquito D'Rivera led an ensemble of primarily college students in an evening of Latin jazz. The groove was solid, the song selection impeccable and ...

1
Album Review

Paquito D'Rivera: Jazz Meets the Classics

Read "Jazz Meets the Classics" reviewed by Maurizio Zerbo


Forte di una solida fama internazionale, il sassofonista cubano ci propone questo singolare CD ispirato dalla musica eurocolta. Dedicati ai più celebri compositori Bach, Mozart, Chopin) di tale tradizione, gli arrangiamenti mostrano la formazione classica del leader esaltandone il grande virtuosismo strumentale. Tanta è la tecnica messa in campo, dinanzi alla quale cedono il passo l'ispirazione e la forte tensione creativa. Sin dalle prime note appare evidente il compiacimento tecnico, nel pur lodevole tentativo di aggiungere colori ...

116
Album Review

Alex Brown: Pianist

Read "Pianist" reviewed by Edward Blanco


With a little help from Cuban-born saxophonist Paquito D'Rivera the jazz world heralds the entrance of 22 year-old Alex Brown, capturing but a glimpse of his talents on a monster recording debut simply entitled Pianist. It was actually D'Rivera's bassist, Oscar Stagnaro,who began to gig with pianist around the Boston area, ultimately introducing Brown to D'Rivera, and the rest is history. Taken with Brown's skills on the instrument and his understanding of Latin music beyond Afro-Cuban rhythms, D'Rivera took him ...

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Interview

Paquito D'Rivera: Jazz at the Heart

Read "Paquito D'Rivera: Jazz at the Heart" reviewed by R.J. DeLuke


There is almost nothing Paquito D'Rivera hasn't accomplished since his arrival on the U.S. jazz scene in the early 1980s, when the young Cuban arrived from Spain--the first spot he hid when he defected from his home nation and its Communist rule that denied personal freedoms and forced musicians playing jazz to call it something else in order to avoid punishment.It was in Madrid that he bided his time until he could make it to New York City, ...

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Education

Music Education Monday: Paquito D'Rivera on composing and playing clarinet, and more

Music Education Monday: Paquito D'Rivera on composing and playing clarinet, and more

Source: St. Louis Jazz Notes by Dean Minderman

Born in 1948 in Cuba, Paquito D'Rivera first became well-known in the USA in the early 1980s as the fiery alto saxophonist for the high-energy band Irakere. Over the ensuing decades, he's revealed other aspects of his musical personality, too—such as his clarinet playing, which has been consistently good enough to earn D'Rivera a place in the critical conversation about the most capable contemporary jazz clarinetists. For today's Music Education Monday, here's a video of a master class with D'Rivera, ...

1

Recording

Paquito D'Rivera's "Jazz Meets The Classics" Out On Aug. 5th!

Paquito D'Rivera's "Jazz Meets The Classics" Out On Aug. 5th!

Source: Bret Sjerven

Legendary Cuban born woodwind master Paquito D'Rivera will release his new classical meets jazz fusion recording on his own Paquito Records on August 5th! The border between classical and jazz music has always been a fluid one, with composers from each camp finding inspiration on both sides of the divide. It wasn’t long ago that Darius Milhaud, Igor Stravinsky and Bela Bartok were studying the exciting, extemporaneous new music of jazz musicians. Of course, many jazz musicians were just as ...

1

Performance / Tour

NJPAC's Sunday brunch series at Dorthaan’s Place

NJPAC's Sunday brunch series at Dorthaan’s Place

Source: Christine Saunders

The finest in jazz is on the menu at Dorthaan’s Place, NJPAC’s Sunday brunch series. Anticipation runs high at Dorthaan’s Place, whether you’re there for the music, the food, the scene, Dorthaan, or all of the above. The Sunday brunch jazz series, hosted by Newark’s peerless “First Lady of Jazz” Dorthaan Kirk, made its debut during NJPAC’s 2012-2013 season with four events. For its sophomore staging, the schedule has grown to six concerts, with the first riveted into the schedule ...

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Recording

Yotam, with Roy Hargrove, Claudio Roditi and Paquito D'Rivera - Brasil (2011)

Yotam, with Roy Hargrove, Claudio Roditi and Paquito D'Rivera - Brasil (2011)

Source: Something Else!

A lesser talent than Israeli guitarist-composer Yotam might have gotten lost in this project. It's not just that Brasil, issued last week by Jazz Legacy Production, features notable stateside jazz stars like Roy Hargrove, Claudio Roditi and Paquito D'Rivera, or even that he's updating familiar compositions by the likes of Antonio Carlos Jobim, or that he completed the sessions with a group of notable Brazilian heroes like drummer-percussionist Vanderlei Pereira, pianist David Feldman and guitarist Toninho Horta. It's all of ...

106

Award / Grant

MCG Jazz, Paquito D’Rivera and "Panamericana Suite" Receives Two Latin Grammy Awards

MCG Jazz, Paquito D’Rivera and "Panamericana Suite" Receives Two Latin Grammy Awards

Source: Michael Ricci

Pittsburgh, PA: MCG Jazz, the independent record label housed at Manchester Craftsmen's Guild on the North Side, has again produced a CD that has won two Latin GRAMMY® Awards. The awards were announced today during the pre-telecast awards show at Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas, NV. Congratulations go out to Paquito D'Rivera on his two Latin GRAMMY® Awards. This time it is for Panamericana Suite (MCGJ 1026), in the Best Latin Jazz Album and Best Contemporary Classical Composition ...

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Interview

Cuban Legend Paquito D'Rivera Interviewed at All About Jazz

Cuban Legend Paquito D'Rivera Interviewed at All About Jazz

Source: All About Jazz

There is almost nothing Paquito D'Rivera hasn't accomplished since his arrival on the U.S. jazz scene in the early 1980s, when the young Cuban arrived from Spain—the first spot he hid when he defected from his home nation and its Communist rule that denied personal freedoms and forced musicians playing jazz to call it something else in order to avoid punishment. Since then, the 62-year-old reed man (alto saxophone and clarinet)/composer/arranger has won nine Grammy Awards in Latin, jazz and ...

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Interview

Latin Jazz Conversations: Paquito D'Rivera (Part 5)

Latin Jazz Conversations: Paquito D'Rivera (Part 5)

Source: The Latin Jazz Corner by Chip Boaz

Depth and diversity really define the magnitude of an artist's career, and determines the impact that their musical will have over time. Most artists pick a direction that dictates their musical output, but only a select few dig far into the history and potential of their chosen path. If they do, they rarely change course and continue their fully encompassing exploration. The ability to go in-depth in several different directions only exists in a rare breed of artist, and that ...

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Interview

Latin Jazz Conversations: Paquito D'Rivera (Part 4)

Latin Jazz Conversations: Paquito D'Rivera (Part 4)

Source: The Latin Jazz Corner by Chip Boaz

When a musician moves into the mature stage of their artistic development, they carry a responsibility to themselves, their listeners, and the great musical community. After committing so many years of their lives to the art form, they need to make a significant statement that reflects their own personalities. At the same time, they need to show the world the musical possibilities inherent in unknown artists or young musicians. If they don't take these simple steps, the world will be ...

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Interview

Latin Jazz Conversations: Paquito D'Rivera (Part 3)

Latin Jazz Conversations: Paquito D'Rivera (Part 3)

Source: The Latin Jazz Corner by Chip Boaz

An artist's drive to bring their musical vision to fruition can be a powerful force, often moving them to make drastic changes in their life. Early ventures into musical expression build an artistic foundation and focus their attention upon a single stylistic direction. Most environments allow an individual to make these strides towards a musical career, but at some point, an artist will reach a breaking point. Then they need to seriously look around them and find another route to ...

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Interview

Latin Jazz Conversations: Paquito D'Rivera (Part 2)

Latin Jazz Conversations: Paquito D'Rivera (Part 2)

Source: The Latin Jazz Corner by Chip Boaz

Very few musicians set out to influence people through the power of their music; they simply follow the heights of their artistic passions. Influence can't really be forced or created, it arises as a result of an artist's work; there's not really a formula that can guarantee the impact of music. An intensely focused passion towards performance and the willingness to try new things helps grab people's attention. An extreme dedication to the art form further impresses an audience and ...

Amy Shook
bass, acoustic
José Valentino
multi-instrumentalist
Alessandro Bertozzi
saxophone, alto
Chuck Currie
woodwinds

Photos

Concerts

Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Cry Me A River

Alma Records
2023

buy

Recuerdos de mi Madre

OpenArt Productions
2022

buy

I Missed You Too!

Paquito Records and Sunnyside Records
2022

buy

El Duelo

Sunnyside Records
2020

buy

Paquito and Manzanero

Paquito Records and Sunnyside Records
2016

buy

Aires Tropicales

Paquito Records and Sunnyside Records
2015

buy

Cry Me A River

From: Cry Me A River
By Paquito D'Rivera

Waltz for Moe

From: Panamericana Suite
By Paquito D'Rivera

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