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William Cepeda

William Cepeda - trombone, composer, producer

William Cepeda comes from a well known family rooted in music. The Familia Cepeda is famous for their performances of folkloric music with African roots, the ‘Bomba,’ and as keepers of traditional Puerto Rican music for many years. The legendary Cepedas’ have produced many of Puerto Rico's most respected Afro-Rican percussionists, singers, dancers, composers and instrumentalists. Now, in William Cepeda, the young multi-instrumentalist, composer and arranger who was nurtured by the twin spirits of bomba and bebop, Puerto Rico's potent rhythms and entrancing melodies radiate out to enthrall an international audience hungry for new Latin sounds.

Despite his family’s intimate association with folkloric music, as a soloist Cepeda went his own way. His interest in jazz and great talent has enabled him to develop a unique jazz style which he calls “Afrorican Jazz”. The music is a fusion of jazz with the musical themes so prevalent in the folk music he grew up with.

Born in Loiza, Puerto Rico, Cepeda was immersed in the rhythms and melodies of the native danza, bomba and plena and even the folk music of the jibaro. With this background and family history, he started playing percussion with friends by age ten. In his teens, Cepeda picked up the trombone and got an early start as a professional musician.

Cepeda’s formal musical training includes BA degrees from Berklee College of Music in Boston and from the Conservatory of Music in Puerto Rico. He also attended the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College in New York, on a full scholarship, where he was awarded a Master’s Degree in Jazz Performance. The training exposed Cepeda to some of the greatest jazz musicians and taught him complexities of jazz improvisation and composition. He studied and played with such notable jazz musicians as Slide Hampton, Donald Byrd, David Murray, and others. He also played and recorded with Latin music artists such as Oscar De Leon, Paquito d’Rivera, Celia Cruz, Tito Puente and Eddie Palmieri. When he is not touring, Cepeda is busy in the recording studio. As a recording artist, he appears on over 100 recordings as well as jingles and movie soundtracks.

Cepeda also played with and learned much from Dizzy Gillespie, one of the founders of Latin Jazz. The association began in 1989 when Cepeda was hired by Gillespie during a tour by Gillespie’s United Nation Orchestra. Joining the tour with Miriam Makeba, Cepeda participated in the fusion of jazz with South African music. On his return to Puerto Rico in 1990, after the tour, and inspired by collaboration with Gillespie and Makeba, Cepeda created his Afrorican jazz style. He had made a unique contribution in fusing the distinct musical styles and traditions of Africa and Puerto Rico, in a way that only Rafael Cortijo had done before with the major difference being the addition of jazz.

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118
Album Review

William Cepeda and Afrorican Jazz: My Roots & Beyond

Read "My Roots & Beyond" reviewed by Eric Saidel


William Cepeda is a man with a mission. His goal is aptly given by the title of his cd, his debut as a leader. He wants to introduce us to the music of his roots and beyond. Cepeda takes the rhythms, the dances, of Puerto Rican music, and uses them as the basis for Jazz. As Paquito D'Rivera tells us in the liner notes, Latin Jazz has been based on the music of Brazil and Cuba, but rarely on the ...

119
Album Review

William Cepeda and Afrorican JazzGrupo AfroBoricua: Bombazo

Read "Bombazo" reviewed by Eric Saidel


This CD represents William Cepeda's attempt to educate us in the ways and rhythms of the music of his native Puerto Rico. The music is based in the drums and rhythms brought to Puerto Rico as a consequence of the African slave trade. The melody instruments are, for the most part, limited to the voices of the lead vocalists. However, more often than not, these are used as percussion instruments as well: the vocals are dominated by call and response ...

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Album Review

William Cepeda Afrorican Jazz: My Roots and Beyond

Read "My Roots and Beyond" reviewed by AAJ Staff


Look at the group name: it’s familiar, yet different. While this is Latin jazz, its flavors are not the usual – you get liquid synths and bomba drums, modern guitar and ancestral chants. “...[W]hile there are plrnty of jazz albums inspired by Cuban rhythms and music, there’s nothing quite of the same caliber out there for Puerto Rican music and jazz. And there should be.” Consider this a goal of William Cepeda, who plays trombone for the United Nation Orchestra. ...

178
Album Review

William Cepeda's Afrorican Jazz: My Roots and Beyond

Read "My Roots and Beyond" reviewed by Joel Roberts


My Roots and Beyond is the perfect title for the debut Blue Jackal recording by William Cepeda's Afrorican Jazz, one of the most exciting and original groups on the Latin jazz scene today.

As the title suggests, this album has somewhat of a historical focus, drawing on many of the traditional musical forms from Cepeda's island homeland -- bomba, plena, jibaro, danza. But Cepeda is no mere cataloguer of past styles. He's an accomplished trombonist and composer with an impressive ...

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Performance / Tour

Jazz This Week: Bill Watrous, Wynton Marsalis and Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, William Cepeda, "Jazz Heaven," and More

Jazz This Week: Bill Watrous, Wynton Marsalis and Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, William Cepeda, "Jazz Heaven," and More

Source: St. Louis Jazz Notes by Dean Minderman

This week's menu of jazz and creative music in St. Louis features visits from two very different touring trombonists, plus a traveling extravaganza featuring Wynton Marsalis fronting a cast of 85 musicians and singers, and as usual, plenty of homegrown talent, too. Let's go the highlights... Tonight, trombonist Bill Watrous will be at Mineral Area College in Park Hills for a concert at the college's Fine Arts Theater, backed by the MAC Kicks Band. Watrous performed early in his career ...

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Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Unity

Casabe Records
2007

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The Extension

Caracalla
2003

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Bombazo

Blue Jackel
1999

buy

My Roots & Beyond

Blue Jackel
1999

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