Latin Jazz in New York City runs from Belongó Afro Latin Jazz, and Jazz at Lincoln Center, to jazz clubs in Harlem and Greenwich Village.
Miguel Zenón Plays Multicultural Jazz in the Dan Weiss Even Odds Trio at The Jazz Gallery
JAZZ GALLERY, NoHo, Manhattan ~ Dan Weiss Even Odds trio 🇵🇷 🇺🇸
VILLAGE VANGUARD, Greenwich Village, Manhattan ~ Miguel Zenón Quartet 🇵🇷
David Virelles Nosotros Ensemble featuring Dafnis Prieto Plays Cuban Jazz and Classical New Music Curated by Tania León at Carnegie Hall
CARNEGIE HALL, Midtown, Manhattan 🇨🇺 🇨🇺
Tito Puente is Still “The King of Latin Music”
HARLEM, Manhattan ~ April 20, 1923 🇵🇷
Continue Reading Tito Puente is Still “The King of Latin Music”
Pedrito Martinez Joins Hip Hop Jazz Singer José James at the Blue Note
BLUE NOTE, Greenwich Village, Manhattan José James’ guest, hip hop jazz 🇨🇺 🇮🇪 🇵🇦
DROM, East Village, Manhattan; rumba, timba, jazz 🇨🇺
Continue Reading Pedrito Martinez Joins Hip Hop Jazz Singer José James at the Blue Note
Leyenda Plays Latin Pop Classics with Bridget Kibbey harp, Samuel Torres percussion, and Louis Arques clarinet; for Carnegie Hall Citywide at Our Saviour’s Atonement Lutheran Church
CARNEGIE HALL CITYWIDE, Our Saviour’s Atonement Lutheran Church, Hudson Heights, Manhattan 🇦🇷 🇨🇴 🇨🇺 🇫🇷 🇺🇸
Paquito D’Rivera Plays Classical Latin Jazz with the New Jersey Symphony at New Jersey Performing Arts Center
NEW JERSEY PERFORMING ARTS CENTER, Newark, New Jersey 🇨🇺 ~ 🇦🇷 🇲🇽 🇺🇸
Latin Jazz Sponsors
- 92nd Street Y, New York
- Blue Note Entertainment
- Carnegie Hall
- Dizzy’s Club
- Harlem Stage
- Hostos Center
- Jazz at Lincoln Center
- Melvis Santa & Jazz Orishas 🇨🇺
- Robert Browning Associates
Thank you for sponsoring Latin Jazz!
Latin Jazz Venues
New York City Jazz Clubs
New York Jazz
Belongó Afro Latin Jazz, led by Arturo O’Farrill, is the world’s leading Latin jazz organization. It supports artists and venues, composes and performs for dance, and reaches into the deepest roots of jazz around the world, far beyond the O’Farrill family’s Cuban roots. afrolatinjazz.org 🇨🇺
Jazz at Lincoln Center, led by Wynton Marsalis, is the world’s leading African American jazz organization. 🇺🇸
NYC Jazz Clubs
Birdland is a legendary jazz club in Hell’s Kitchen. Arturo O’Farrill’s Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra is in residence.
Blue Note New York is one of NYC’s iconic jazz supper clubs.
Dizzy’s Club at Jazz at Lincoln Center swings nightly with great curation, unforgettable Central Park views, and good gumbo.
Drom is a world music club in Manhattan’s East Village that hosts Latin jazz. Pedrito Martinez, the world’s first-call rumbero is in residence.
Jazz Gallery is a non-profit jazz club and museum in NoMad, Manhattan that develops emerging talent. Really big stars play too.
Minton’s, in Harlem, is the room where bebop was born.
Terraza 7 is New York’s most Latin jazz club. It’s run by a Colombian. 🇨🇴
Village Vanguard is New York’s oldest continually operating jazz club.
Zinc Bar, in Greenwich Village, is the old Cinderella club. It’s run by an Argentine family.
NYC Jazz Theaters
92nd Street Y, New York’s, Kaufmann Concert Hall hosts some jazz concerts in the Upper East Side.
Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall is used for jazz concerts in Midtown.
David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center now hosts some jazz concerts.
Hostos Center in Mott Haven, The Bronx, has the Northeast’s most adventurous Latin jazz programming.
Harlem Stage hosts legends and is an incubator for artists who become legends.
Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Rose Theater and Appel Room are jazz theaters.
Metropolitan Opera is presenting jazz operas.
NYC Jazz Artists
This is a new section to support New York City’s jazz community. We are adding to it as we go.
Chris Botti is a New York Italian who is one of the world’s most popular jazz instrumentalists. His Holiday Residency is pushing 20 years. 🇮🇹
Melanie Charles is a Brooklyn Haitian who sings jazz. @melaniecharlesisdflower 🇭🇹
Eddie Palmieri, a Puerto Rican NEA Jazz Master, is one of New York’s elder jazzmen who has been influential his entire life, and is now mentoring the next generation. 🇵🇷
NYC Jazz Festivals
Blue Note Jazz Festival is at the Blue Note jazz club in Greenwich Village, and other venues around town, all June long.
Jazz in July at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan’s Upper East Side is New York City’s July jazz festival.
Nublu Jazz Festival is at Nublu in Manhattan’s East Village.
Winter Jazzfest, with its APAP showcase marathons, is at Le Poisson Rouge, other Greenwich Village night clubs, and in Brooklyn in January.
Women in Latin Jazz Festival produced by Annette A. Aguilar & Stringbeans is at Hostos Center in Mott Haven, The Bronx in May.
Women’s Jazz Festival is at Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem in March.
Latin Jazz is From New York City
Latin Jazz in New York City is native. Jazz and Latin jazz cats used to cross Fifth Avenue to sit in with each other.
The Caribbean hero twins, separated at birth by colonial divisions in New Orleans and Cuba / Ayití / Quisqueya / Hispaniola, were reunited. It sounds like magical realism, but it’s real.
In the 1940s while Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker and others were developing “bebop” modern jazz in Harlem; Mario Bauzá, music director of Machito and His Afro-Cubans, was developing “cubop” Latin jazz in “El Barrio” East Harlem.
It happened one night at the Park Avenue Ballroom on the intersection of Harlem and “El Barrio” East Harlem on May 29, 1943. That night Bauzá composed “Tanga,” the first song that fully expressed the Latin jazz form. It was the first true blending of New Orleans and Cuban jazz traditions. Listen to it on YouTube.
So bebop (modern jazz) and cubop (latin jazz) were created Uptown in Harlem and East Harlem by people who were playing together. Dizzy Gillespie completed the reunion when he later asked Bauzá for a conga player. His collaboration with conguero Chano Pozo led to jazz classics “Manteca” and “Tin tin deo.”
Don’t think badly of us for pointing this out, but “tanga” means cannabis in one of the African languages, and g-string in Spanish. Those two go together like jazz and latin jazz. It takes us back to the beginning of jass in Storyville, New Orleans. Don’t get excited, Latin music always begins in places like that. It’s about getting together.
Turns out Bauzá also played sax on “El manisero,” the first global Latin hit recorded by RCA Victor in 1930 New York. You can’t make this up.
Jazz is from New Orleans, the Caribbean, Mother Afrika, and Arabia
Jazz is Latin from its New Orleans roots, but those roots extend to Cuba, Haiti / Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, North Africa, West Africa, Central Africa, and even Arabia.
New Orleans jazz, Brazilian choró, and Jewish klezmer developed independently, but all have the same vibe. Explain that!
Jazz and classical music are two sides of the same coin. A lot of Latin music is in conversation with jazz. Brazilian samba jazz is bossa nova, the world’s most popular music after the Beatles.