This is a great week for musical events throughout the United States.  In Miami Beach, the Global Cuba Fest is in progress with several different performing artists including Hilario Bell, who is doing both a workshop and a performance on Saturday, March 16 at 2pm; the Yosvany Terry Quintet, Horacio "El Negro" Hernandez & Italuba, who are in concert later at 7pm, and The Creole Choir of Cuba, which is performing on Sunday, March 17 at 7pm. All of these events are at the North Beach Bandshell.  For more information, a link to FUNDarte's page is here. 

After a few days (March 13-17) at the Blue Note in NYC, The Afro-Cuban All Stars tour continues throughout the United States, but we wanted to bring special attention to their performance at the Clifton Center in Louisville, Kentucky on Wednesday March 20 at 7:30pm. Over the course of the past few years, Louisville has become an important locale for Midwesterners to see this music, and this will be the only Midwest stop for this group during this tour.  (Chicagoans, it's a 5-6 hour drive for you and worth the trip if you can manage the time.) The ticket link to their website is here. 

On Saturday, March 23 at 7:00pm, the AC Jazz Project with very special guest Jimmy Branly, which like Maraca can do both dance and Jazz material, will be bringing what we are told is primarily a Timba dance set to Yoshi's in San Francisco. This truly is a group of all stars - the leader/trumpeter Josiel Perez played with Maraca and Klimax; pianist Fermin Sifontes played with Grupo Afrocuba; bassist Carlos Cuba played with Pablo Milanes and Klimax, and drummer Jimmy Branly has played with NG La Banda and Ernán López Nussa. The group also features conguero Joey De Leon, vocalist Alberto Tomayo, trumpeter Ronal Segovia and saxophonist Camilo Puche. We recently heard a couple of tracks from their forthcoming recording which is currently in production, and if the rest of the tracks are as solid as what we heard, this is going to be a welcome addition to the scene in the United States.  We'll share more when the project is ready. For now, the ticket link for Yoshi's is here.

The Jazz option in San Francisco this week  is a series of 4 concerts by John Santos from March 21-24 at SFJAZZ featuring different guests each evening including Pável Urkiza & Ricardo Pons on the 21st, Papo Vazquez and the Mighty Pirates Troubadours on the 22nd, Filosofía Caribeña II on the 23rd and Omar Sosa, Kenny Endo and Abhigit Banerjee on the 24th. For more information, see their website link here. 

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Two different roundtable discussions in Miami and Chicago this week look promising for those who are able to attend. The Chicago event, From Cuba to Chicago: Pedro Páramo and Havana Blue, will take place on Thursday, March 14 at the Instituto Cervantes and is a panel discussion about artistic exchanges with Cuba.  Artists from the River North Dance Chicago, the Chicago Jazz Philharmonic, Chicago's Goodman Theatre and Cuba's Teatro Buendía will participate in the discussion. Chicago will host the world premieres of Havana Blue and Pedro Páramo in the near future.  
This event is free to the public, but reservations are needed (for reservations, see the web page at  GoodmanTheatre.org/CubatoChicago)

The Miami event, Cuban Music in the Transnational Context,  is a panel discussion featuring the musicians Gema Corredera, Yosvany Terry and Horacio "El Negro" Hernandez with additional panelist Eva Silot Bravo.  This is also on Thursday, March 14.  According to the announcement, there will be a music demonstration along with the panel discussion.  This is also free to the public and will be focusing upon  the impact of musicians who have emigrated to cities like New York, Miami and Madrid and how they are affecting the music globally. Timba.com's regular visitors will note that Yosvany Terry (as well as Yunior Terry) has been mentioned on our site more than once as an artist of special interest in the new music being produced today. 

Also, the Creole Choir of Cuba returns to Chicago after their triumphant performance there in 2011 (you can read our review of that performance here.) This time, they will be performing at the Old Town School of Folk Music on Wednesday, March 13 at 8:30pm. This is a full audiovisual experience, and we recommend it highly. 

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Here's the next installment of Tom's 3- or 4-part series on Juan d'Marcos & the Afro-Cuban All Stars at SF Jazz.  And here are the remaining tour dates. Next stop: Waterbury Connecticut and then on to NY for a full week at the Blue Note.

Coming: Havana d'Primera at Yoshi's SF - May 31 & June 1.

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Article and all photos by Bill Tilford -- All Rights Reserved
(This series of articles is intended primarily for Salseros who are new to Timba,
but Timberos will hopefully also find some items of interest as well.)

Yambú / Guaguancó Workshop

Those of you who know that you are dancing "On 1" or "On 2"  but not too much more than that may not realize that originally, everyone that was dancing was moving to things with other names- Son, Guaracha, Guaguancó, Mambo and many others.  Some of the rhythms and dances (such as the Pilón and Pachanga) have all but vanished over the years because neither Salsa nor Timba preserved them intact.......click here to read the full article >>>

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