WHAT TO EXPECT

• New works created by global jazz composers and brought to life by the JLCO.

• There will be a free pre-concert lecture at 7pm for each performance

ABOUT THE CONCERT

The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis and Special Guest Paquito D’Rivera perform a pair of exclusive JALC commissions by mid-career masters—Tres Aguas by Cuban pianist Elio Villafranca and Colors of Colombia by Colombian harpist Edmar Castañeda. Castañeda is a transformative virtuoso of the Llanera harp, a traditional instrument from the Eastern Plains of Colombia and a fixture on the international jazz arena for more than a decade; he’ll mix the diverse rhythms of his homeland with the various dialects of swing, reminding us that Colombia and New York are in the same hemisphere. Villafranca’s Tres Aguas features dancers from Cuba, Peru, and the U.S. moving to music influenced by the rich Afro-Diasporic musical streams from Venezuela, Cuba, and New Orleans jazz. The common thread is long-time Jazz at Lincoln Center extended family member Paquito D’Rivera—himself a distinguished composer and authoritative interpreter of a wide range of Pan-American idioms on clarinet and alto saxophone—whose Panamericana Suite, which debuted at JALC in 2000, helped launch Jazz at Lincoln Center’s long-standing relationship to Pan-American music.

WHAT TO EXPECT

• A concert honoring iconic pianist/composer and NEA Jazz Master Toshiko Akiyoshi

• There will be a free pre-concert lecture at 7pm for each performance

ABOUT THE CONCERT

On The Music of Toshiko Akiyoshi with The JLCO with Wynton Marsalis and special guest Lew Tabackin music directed by Ted Nash, The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis play the monumental compositions of the iconic pianist-composer Toshiko Akiyoshi, as they are joined by her on stage for part of the performance.

Manchuria-born, ethnically Japanese, Akiyoshi has been a force on the international scene since 1952, when the iconic pianist Oscar Peterson, on tour with Jazz at the Philharmonic, heard her in Tokyo and insisted that JATP impresario Norman Granz record her.

Akiyoshi—who moved to the U.S. in 1956, and will be 93 at the time of the concert—has impressed both for the comprehensive mastery and fierce distillation of the language of bebop master Bud Powell that she was able to assimilate early on in isolation from the U.S. scene and for her evocative corpus of sui generis works since 1973 for the Akiyoshi-Tabackin Orchestra with Lew Tabackin (who will play tenor saxophone and flute on this evening), combining swing, bebop, classical, and elements drawn from her Japanese heritage.

WHAT TO EXPECT

• One of the world’s top jazz vocalists returns to mesmerize audiences with her beloved Valentine’s Day shows in Rose Theater.

• An intimate, powerful performance by a master vocalist and hypnotizing storyteller

ABOUT THE CONCERT

Another JALC perennial is a Valentine’s Day tradition, on which Dianne Reeves sings on the subject of love, fulfilled and unrequited, carnal and spiritual, illuminating the complexities attendant to matters of the heart with a warm, dazzling contralto, spanning registers with no apparent strain, conveying emotional nuance through exquisitely calibrated tonal color and phrasing. “I just want to tell the story,” Reeves says. “My instrument is an extension of my soul.”