Afro Yaqui Music Collective

Part of this performance will include brand new material titled A Reading Erased: a poetic imagining on the life of Arturo Alfonso Schomburg, by Magdalena Gomez.

Arturo Alfonso Schomburg, was a historian, writer, and activist. Schomburg was a Puerto Rican of African and German descent who moved to the United States and researched and raised awareness of the great contributions that Afro-Latin Americans and Afro-Americans have made to society

The Afro Yaqui Music Collective is a postcolonial big band which imagines a world where many worlds fit. The band is part of the legacy of the asian-american composer-activist Fred Ho, and their music draws from mainstream jazz, the avant-garde, and traditional forms from both Africa, East Asia, and American Indigenous nations. At times aggressive and caustic, it is deeply engaged in ongoing struggles for social justice and revolution. The Afro Yaqui Music Collective has been acknowledged by the New York Times as “furthering the musical legacy,” and the band has been presented at an eclectic set of venues over the country, including through Lincoln Center and Red Rooster in Harlem, the Free Library of Philadelphia, Vibrato Jazz Club in Los Angeles, and universities around the Americas from Pittsburgh to Vermont, to Mexico and Cuba. The collective is a site of several intercultural and transnational collaborations, working with musicians, poets and dramaturgs from Cuba, Mexico, Brazil, Chicago, Brooklyn, Wisconsin, and Pittsburgh.

AYMC is co-led by Gizelxanath Rodriguez, a Mexican operatic vocalist and cellist of Yaqui indigenous descent who is an internationally performing soprano and activist, and the recipient of a 2014 Latin ACE Award. Gizelxanath co-leads the band with her partner, Ben Barson, a composer and baritone saxophinst who recently won the Johnny Mandel Prize, the highest honor in jazz composition, from ASCAP. Barson and Rodriguez have created mixed-media work with a diverse group of poetic-playwrights, including Magdalena Gomez and Ruth Margraff, the latter who is the librettist for the Collective’s latest work, Mirror Butterfly: The Migrant Liberation Movement Suite, premiered in October at the New Hazlett Theatre in Pittsburgh, PA as part of their CSA residency, and acclaimed by audience and reviewers. Excerpts from Mirror Butterfly will be performed this evening.

Featured Musicians:

Gizelxanath Rodriguez – Voice and Electric Cello
Jin Yang — Pipa
Ben Barson — Baritone Sax
Erik Lawrence — Alto Sax
Roger Romero — Tenor Sax
Samuel Okoh-Boateng – Piano
Beni Rossman – Bass
Hugo Macaho Cruz — Drums
Aidana Yntykbayeva – Kobyz
Kelsey Robinson– Voice and dance
More musicians TBA!

(photo by Renee Rosensteel and courtesy of the New Hazlett Theater)