Elio Villafranca’s “Tres Aguas”, Featuring the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Special Guest Paquito d’Rivera

The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Special Guest Paquito d’Rivera perform a pair of exclusive JALC commissions by mid-career masters—Tres Aguas by Cuban pianist Elio Villafranca and Music of Colombia by Colombian harpist Edmar Castaneda. Castaneda 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. Grammy-nominated 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.