Armando Anthony "Chick" Corea was an American jazz composer, pianist, keyboardist, bandleader, and occasional percussionist. His compositions "Spain", "500 Miles High", "La Fiesta", "Armando's Rhumba", and "Windows" are widely considered jazz standards. As a member of Miles Davis's band in the late 1960s, he participated in the birth of jazz fusion. In the 1970s he formed Return to Forever. Along with McCoy Tyner, Herbie Hancock, and Keith Jarrett, Corea is considered to have been one of the foremost jazz pianists of the post-John Coltrane era.
Callen Radcliffe Tjader Jr. was an American Latin Jazz musician, often described as the most successful non-Latino Latin musician. He explored other jazz idioms, especially small group modern jazz, even as he continued to perform music of Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America.
Café Tacuba, stylized as Café Tacvba, is a band from Naucalpan de Juárez, State of Mexico. The group gained popularity in the early 1990s. They were founded in 1989, before they had the current lineup of Rubén Isaac Albarrán Ortega, Emmanuel del Real Díaz, José Alfredo "Joselo" Rangel Arroyo, and Enrique "Quique" Rangel Arroyo:, their friend Roberto Silva played the keyboards for a short period of time. Since the Cuatro Caminos World Tour, Luis "El Children" Ledezma has played the drums in every concert but is not considered an official member of the band, as well as Ramiro Del Real Díaz, who joined the band as a support musician playing the guitar since 2015.
Raymundo "Ray" Barretto Pagán was an American percussionist and bandleader of Puerto Rican descent. Throughout his career as a percussionist, he played a wide variety of Latin music styles, as well as Latin jazz. His first hit, "El Watusi", was recorded by his Charanga Moderna in 1962, becoming the most successful pachanga song in the United States. In the late 1960s, Barretto became one of the leading exponents of boogaloo and what would later be known as salsa. Nonetheless, many of Barretto's recordings would remain rooted in more traditional genres such as son cubano. A master of the descarga, Barretto was a long-time member of the Fania All-Stars. His success continued into the 1970s with songs such as "Cocinando" and "Indestructible". His last album for Fania Records, Soy dichoso, was released in 1990. He then formed the New World Spirit jazz ensemble and continued to tour and record until his death in 2006.
Afro-Cuban jazz is the earliest form of Latin jazz. It mixes Afro-Cuban clave-based rhythms with jazz harmonies and techniques of improvisation. Afro-Cuban music has deep roots in African ritual and rhythm. The genre emerged in the early 1940s with the Cuban musicians Mario Bauzá and Frank Grillo "Machito" in the band Machito and his Afro-Cubans in New York City. In 1947, the collaborations of bebop trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and percussionist Chano Pozo brought Afro-Cuban rhythms and instruments, such as the tumbadora and the bongo, into the East Coast jazz scene. Early combinations of jazz with Cuban music, such as "Manteca" and "Mangó Mangüé", were commonly referred to as "Cubop" for Cuban bebop.
Francisco de Jesús Rivera Figueras, known as Paquito D'Rivera, is a Cuban-American alto saxophonist, clarinetist and composer. He was a member of the Cuban songo band Irakere and, since the 1980s, he has established himself as a bandleader in the United States. His smooth saxophone tone and his frequent combination of Latin jazz and classical music have become his trademarks.
Ethno jazz, also known as world jazz, is a subgenre of jazz and world music, developed internationally in the 1950s and '60s and broadly characterized by a combination of traditional jazz and non-Western musical elements. Though occasionally equaled to or considered the successor of world music, an independent meaning of ethno jazz emerged around 1990 through the commercial success of ethnic music via globalization, which especially observed a Western focus on Asian musical interpretations. The origin of ethno jazz has widely been credited to saxophonist John Coltrane.
Douglas Clare Fischer was an American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader. After graduating from Michigan State University, he became the pianist and arranger for the vocal group the Hi-Lo's in the late 1950s. Fischer went on to work with Donald Byrd and Dizzy Gillespie, and became known for his Latin and bossa nova recordings in the 1960s. He composed the Latin jazz standard "Morning", and the jazz standard "Pensativa". Consistently cited by jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock as a major influence, he was nominated for eleven Grammy Awards during his lifetime, winning for his landmark album, 2+2 (1981), the first of Fischer's records to incorporate the vocal ensemble writing developed during his Hi-Lo's days into his already sizable Latin jazz discography; it was also the first recorded installment in Fischer's three-decade-long collaboration with his son Brent. Fischer was also a posthumous Grammy winner for ¡Ritmo! (2012) and for Music for Strings, Percussion and the Rest (2013).
Israel López Valdés, better known as Cachao, was a Cuban double bassist and composer. Cachao is widely known as the co-creator of the mambo and a master of the descarga. Throughout his career he also performed and recorded in a variety of music styles ranging from classical music to salsa. An exile in the United States since the 1960s, he only achieved international fame following a career revival in the 1990s.
Arturo "Chico" O'Farrill was a Cuban composer, arranger, and conductor, best known for his work in the Latin idiom, specifically Afro-Cuban jazz or "Cubop", although he also composed traditional jazz pieces and even symphonic works.
Jim Nolet is an American jazz violinist, artist, performer, and educator known internationally as a composer/improviser in world and jazz idioms. He has a particular interest in the music of Brazil. He has performed in the United States, Canada, Europe, Japan, and Latin America.
Horacio "El Negro" Hernández is a Cuban drummer and percussionist. He has played alongside Latin jazz pianists such as Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Michel Camilo, Chucho Valdés, Eddie Palmieri and Hilario Durán.
Peter Beets is a Dutch jazz pianist. He has shared the stage with Chick Corea, Wynton Marsalis, Dee Dee Bridgewater, George Coleman, Johnny Griffin, Chris Potter, Kurt Rosenwinkel and John Clayton. He recorded with Jeff Hamilton and Curtis Fuller and in 2001 he released his New York Trio, which was the start of his international career.
Eric Ineke is a Dutch jazz drummer who started his career in the 1960s. After a few years of lessons of John Engels, he gained his first experience as jazzdrummer with singer Henny Vonk and tenorsaxophonist Ferdinand Povel. Thanks to Pim Jacobs, Ruud Jacobs, Wim Overgaauw, Rita Reys and Piet Noordijk, Eric became well known in the jazz scene. In 1969 he made his first record with tenor saxophonist Ferdinand Povel and through the years he has played with the Rob Agerbeek Quintet and trio, the Rein de Graaff/Dick Vennik Quartet, the Ben van den Dungen/Jarmo Hoogendijk Quintet and the Piet Noordijk Quartet. During his career he has also played with numerous international, mainly American soloists like Hank Mobley, Phil Woods, Lucky Thompson, Dexter Gordon, Johnny Griffin, George Coleman, Shirley Horn, Dizzy Gillespie, Al Cohn, Grant Stewart, Jimmy Raney, Barry Harris, Eric Alexander and Dave Liebman, recorded numerous CD's and appeared at many national and international jazz festivals. For more than 40 years he has been the drummer of the Rein de Graaff Trio and since 2006 has led the Eric Ineke JazzXpress, a quintet in the hard-bop tradition. With this quintet, Ineke got invited in 2011 by the American Jazz Museum in Kansas City with jazz singer Deborah Brown where they did a few performances, including one on Kansas Public Radio and a CD recording produced by Bobby Watson. In October 2016, the JazzXpress presented its latest album Dexternity on the Dutch television in "Vrije Geluiden" of the VPRO.
"Morning" is a Latin Jazz standard written by American pianist/composer/arranger Clare Fischer, first heard on his 1965 LP, Manteca!, Fischer's first recording conceived entirely in the Afro-Cuban idiom, which, along with the Brazilian music he had explored at length over the previous three years, would provide fertile ground for Fischer's musical explorations over the next half-century.
Luis Nubiola is a Cuban-born jazz saxophonist, composer, and teacher.
Francisco Jose Mela is a Cuban drummer and percussionist who has performed with a wide array of prominent international Latin and jazz artists including Kenny Barron, Gary Bartz, JoAnne Brackeen, Jane Bunnett, Regina Carter, Anat Cohen, Paquito D'Rivera, George Garzone, Larry Grenadier, Stefon Harris, Lionel Loueke, Joe Lovano, Jason Moran, John Patitucci, John Scofield, Esperanza Spalding, Mark Turner, McCoy Tyner, Chucho Valdés, Kenny Werner, and many others.
Nicky Marrero is an American Latin jazz percussionist, best known as the timbale player in The Fania Allstars and as a recording artist during the 1970s salsa boom in New York.
Jarmo Hoogendijk is a Dutch former jazz trumpet and flugelhorn player. He performed successfully from the 1980s until 2004, when he ended his active career as a musician. Since then, he has been teaching music at three major Dutch music academies: Royal Conservatoire The Hague, Codarts Jazz Academy Rotterdam and the Amsterdam University of the Arts.
Ben van den Dungen is a Dutch jazz saxophonist, composer and music educator. Van den Dungen studied at the Royal Conservatoire The Hague, graduating cum laude (1988). He has been performing nationally and internationally since the 1980s and teaches at the Codarts Jazz Academy Rotterdam.
