NEA Jazz Master Paquito D'Rivera with Claudio Roditi and New York Voices

Newark, New Jersey - As part of the New Jersey Performing Arts Center's Alternate Routes series, jazz legend and 2005 recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Jazz Master Fellowship, Paquito D'Rivera will perform with Brazilian jazz trumpter Claudio Roditi and Grammy Award winning vocal ensemble, New York Voices, in an evening entitled Brazilian Dreams on Sunday, May 14 at 3:00 p.m. in the Victoria Theater. Tickets are $37 and are available by telephone at 1-888-GO-NJPAC (1-888-466-5722), at the NJPAC Box Office at One Center Street in downtown Newark, or by visiting the NJPAC website at www.njpac.org. Alternate Routes is sponsored, in part, by American Express and made possible through the generosity of Allen and Joan Bildner and the Bildner Family Foundation and The Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, and through the endowment gifts of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and The Wallace Foundation.

The NJPAC performance of Brazilian Dreams is part of the NEA Jazz Masters On Tour program. Brazilian Dreams combines D'Rivera's longtime love of Brazilian music, specifically Bossa Nova, and vocal quartet music. Songs chosen for this performance will be from D'Rivera's Latin Grammy Award-winning album Brazilian Dreams, which featured Claudio Roditi and New York Voices.

Paquito D'Rivera was a recipient of a 2005 National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Jazz Master Fellowship, the “highest honor that our nation bestows upon jazz musicians. These fellowships are given in recognition that this magnificent art form, so profoundly based in American culture, is one of America's greatest gifts to the world," according to the NEA. Past winners of the fellowship include Roy Eldridge, Dizzy Gillespie, Count Basie, Shirley Horn, Sonny Rollins, Miles Davis, Ella Fitzgerald, and Herbie Hancock, among others. In 2005, D'Rivera was also one of ten artists given the 2005 National Medal of Arts by President Bush.

Born in Havana, Cuba, D'Rivera began playing both the clarinet and the saxophone at an early age with the Cuban National Symphony Orchestra. He was a founding member of the Orquesta Cubana de Musica Moderna, which he conducted for two years, and was a founding member and co-director of the innovative musical group Irakere. He has won six Grammy Awards and was the first artist to win Latin Grammys in both Classical and Latin Jazz categories for Stravinsky's Historia del Soldado and Brazilian Dreams. He has countless recordings and performances both in jazz and Latin music, but he has just as prestigious a list of accomplishments in the classical realm as well, playing with the London Royal Symphony and the Brooklyn Philharmonic, and recording with Yo Yo Ma. D'Rivera was an artist in residence at NJPAC.

Born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Claudio Roditi began playing piano as a kid but moved to the trumpet at age 12. He has continued mixing music and rhythms from Brazil and jazz ever since. He has performed with the likes of Joe Henderson, Herbie Mann, Tito Puente, McCoy Tyner and Paquito D'Rivera. His solo work Symphonic Bossa Nova with Ettore Stratta and the Royal Philharmonic earned Roditi a Grammy nomination in 1995.

Formed in 1987, New York Voices is comprised of Darmon Meader, Peter Eldridge, Kim Nazarian, and Lauren Kinhan. They have performed with a number of influential jazz artists including Ray Brown, Bobby McFerrin, Nancy Wilson, George Benson, and the like. They have released six full length albums and have appeared as guests on many more albums while also traveling the world to perform. They appeared on Paquito D'Rivera's Brazilian Dreams.

New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC), located in the heart of an emerging downtown Newark, New Jersey, is the sixth largest performing arts center in the United States. Home of the Grammy Award-winning New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, NJPAC has been widely cited as a catalyst in the revitalization of New Jersey's largest city, attracting over 4 million visitors (including more than 800,000 children) in its first eight years of operation.

This program is made possible in part by funds from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State, a Partner Agency of the National Endowment for the Arts, and by funds from the National Endowment for the Arts.

WCBS-TV/CBS2 is the official television partner for the New Jersey Performing Arts Center.

NJPAC's Alternate Routes presents jazz legend and 2005 recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Jazz Master Fellowship, Paquito D'Rivera, performing Brazilian Dreams with Brazilian jazz trumpter Claudio Roditi and Grammy Award winning vocal ensemble, New York Voices.

Tickets are $37, and may be purchased by telephone at 1-888-GO-NJPAC (1-888-466-5722), at the NJPAC Box Office at One Center Street in downtown Newark.