It's the most ambitious reimagining of the music I have ever heard! —Jamie Bernstein
Recorded live at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola in NYC, this exciting new reimagining is West Side Story like you’ve never heard it before as performed by the amazing multi-Grammy nominated 21 piece Bobby Sanabria Multiverse Big Band. This set includes an accompanying 16 page booklet containing rare photographs and features the rhythms of various Latin American countries, and more with exciting new instrumental arrangements all done through the lens of the Latin jazz continuum.
About the Relief Fund
Partial proceeds from this special commemorative set will be donated to the Jazz Foundation of America's Puerto Rico Relief Fund. The island has been completely devastated by hurricanes Irma and Maria and the government’s response has been less than adequate. What better way to help my ancestral homeland Puerto Rico and its people, than through the music of West Side Story Reimagined. —Bobby SanabriaPraise for Bobby Sanabria
Bobby Sanabria is equally adept at the swinging big band sounds of drummers Buddy Rich and Louis Bellson along with another boyhood hero, fusion pioneer Billy Cobham and timbale titan Tito Puente." —Bill Milkowski, Jazz Times(Mr. Sanabria) expands the possibilities, moving the sound of bands like that of (Puente, Machito), with all the heft and intricacy and clave-based dance rhythm, into the harmonically oriented sophistication of current New York jazz players. It's New York up and down, and back and forth across the last century, from the street to the mambo palaces to the conservatories." —Ben Ratliff, The NY Times
About Bobby Sanabria
7-time Grammy nominated as a bandleader, drummer, percussionist, composer, arranger, educator, documentary film producer, multicultural warrior, activist, and Co-Artistic Director of the Bronx Music Heritage center, Bobby Sanabria is a native Nuyorican born and raised in NYC’s South Bronx. He is unique in that he has performed and/or recorded with every major figure in the development of what today is known as Latin jazz. From the genre’s acknowledged creator, maestro Mario Bauzá, to Mongo Santamaria, with whom he started his career, to Tito Puente, Chico O’Farrill, Ray Barretto, Paquito D'Rivera, Larry Harlow, Candido, Dizzy Gillespie, Louis “Perico” Ortiz and many more. His versatility and scope of musical influence as both a drummer and percussionist has extended to other forms of music working with such genre-bending artists as composers David Amram, Henry Threadgill, and poet Sekou Sundiata. A noted educator and clinician, he is is on the faculty of the Manhattan School of Music and the New School Jazz & Contemporary Music where he directs both schools’ acclaimed Afro-Cuban jazz orchestras. In 1975 he was the first student of Puerto Rican descent at the famed Berklee College of Music graduating with his B.M. in 1979.For more information contact Jim Eigo, Jazz Promo Services.