The trumpeter, composer, and bandleader Dizzy Gillespie pioneered the Afro-Cuban music movement in the late 1940s, which was primarily introduced by Cuban trumpeter Mario Bauza’s big band sound based on Cuban rhythms that led to the New York City Latin dance craze for the the mambo, rumba, and cha cha. By 1962, when flutist Eddy Zervigon and his brothers Kelvin and Rudy arrived, they were just in time to extend the city’s Latin craze with the founding of Orquesta Broadway. Their pulsating Cuban dance music has kept them in the limelight of Latin music in the United States through now.
At 7p.m. on March 24, City College Center for the Arts (CCCA) will mark the 60-year history of the Cuban charanga band Orquesta Broadway at Aaron Davis Hall’s Marian Anderson Theatre (160 Convent Avenue), with a special performance featuring flutist and educator Connie Grossman and flutist Karen Joseph. Radio host and Latin music historian Nelson Radhames Rodriguez will serve as producer and emcee.
Orquesta Broadway members include music director and flutist Eddy Zervigon, drummer Ivan Zervigon, pianist Pablo Mayor, bassist Berny Minoso, congas Luis Mangual, timbales James Guevara, violinists David Remedi and Yunior Terry, and singers Hector Aponte, Jorge Maldonado, and Luis Rosa.
“Traditional Cuban style persists under the direction of El Maestro Eddy Zervigon, who for more than 60 years has been the leader of the mother of all charangas outside of the island,” said Rodriguez.
Tickets are available at citycollegecenterforthearts.org.
On March 24, tenor and baritone saxophonist and flutist Carol Sudhalter will celebrate her 80th year (her birthday was January 5) at Flushing Town Hall (137-35 Northern Blvd. in Queens) with her group of “Octogenarian Women of Jazz.” The band comprises pianist Bertha Hope; drummer and vocalist Paula Hampton (the Hampton family with Slide and Lionel Hampton); and vocalist Keisha St. Joan. The quintet will perform jazz standards and their own originals with a rare guest appearance by Bill Crow, now 95, long-time bassist for Gerry Mulligan and a member of Eddie Condon’s house band before becoming a jazz columnist and author. The show starts at 8 p.m.
Among the band’s original numbers to be performed is Hope’s “Da Las Senidras,” recently published in Terri Lynne Carrington’s “Compositions by Female Composers,” dedicated to the famed bassist Walter Booker. In forging her own path, we look to singer St. Joan, who brings a variety of colorful harmonies to the group, having performed with the likes of Frank Wess, Carline Ray, and Hope.
“I have known Carol for many years and participated in her big band. She is always thinking ahead of how to keep the music alive,” said Hope, founder of the ELMOllenium project to preserve the musical legacy of her late husband, Elmo Hope. “I am happy to be able to participate in my eighth decade on the planet and be around people who have been playing and loving this music for many years.”
Sudhalter is known as the house bandleader of FTH’s monthly Louis Armstrong Jazz Jam. For 15 years, she played the Cajun Restaurant Sunday Brunch, with Jimmy the Face Butts and Al “Doc” Pittman.
During this Women’s History Month performance, the band members will take questions from the audience.
Flushing Town Hall is at. For tickets, visit the website flushingtownhall.org or call 718-463-7700.
On March 24, singer Chuck Jackson will be honored “In a Celebration of Life” event (he transitioned on February 16). The tribute will be held at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (515 Malcolm X Blvd.). The hosts will be Grammy-winning vocalist Dionne Warwick, performing arts advocate Voza Rivers, and legendary singer/songwriter Valerie Simpson, at 7 p.m. The debonaire, suave Jackson with the rum-spiked timbre, made girls shout and squirm in their Apollo Theater seats with hits like “I Don’t Want to Cry,” “Any Day Now,” “I Keep Forgettin,’” and “All Over the World.”
Jackson was one of the first artists to successfully record material by Burt Bacharach and Hal David. In October 2015, he was inducted into the Rhythm and Blues Music Hall of Fame. His song “Any Day Now” was used in a Volkswagen commercial in 2021. He was the lead singer of the do wop group the Del-Vikings, who recorded the hit “Come Go With Me.” Come out and celebrate the life of this iconic singer, an adopted son of Harlem.
This event is free to the public but reservations are required. To RSVP, email theellerbeegroup@aol.com.
In this 21st century, it is becoming more arduous to differentiate the homogenized truth of the corporate news media from reality. But what happens when the novelist, poet, and playwright Ishmael Reed brilliantly drops a bomb on this cloud of hypocrisy in his new two-act play “The Conductor”? It’s playing at Theater for the New City (155-1st Avenue) through March 26.
This play—his 11th—represents his longtime reputation as a word warrior challenging America’s inaccuracies or deliberate untruths through his coined activist phrase and book title “Writin’ is Fightin.’”
“The Conductor,” directed by Carla Blank, sheds light on the Recall of members of the San Francisco Unified School District Board of Education in 2021–2022. While the press saw the Recall as the expression of Chinese American parents objecting to admission to an elite high school based on a lottery system instead of merit, excellence, or grades, it would not have been successful without the funds provided by billionaires.
The game is to advance regressive policies, dismantle affirmative action (which seems to be gaining momentum among right-wingers), and ban racial justice education by forcing conversations about racial equality and LGBTQ rights at the school board level.
Well-versed in the art of divide and conquer, “the backers of the Recall used some minority faces to front the Recall while they attempted to remain in the background.” In Reed’s play, the character Shashi Parmar is that face.
Ordinarily, that’s an easy plot—except Reed never goes for the obvious. As the master of satire, he drops Parmar smack into a 21st-century underground railroad system, where he is the runaway needing help to escape back to his native land of India. Ironically, his conductor is none other than the play’s main character, Warren Chipp, a progressive black columnist who lost his job because he supported the lottery and it was Parmar who signed the petition for his newspaper dismissal.
All the flying fiery words take place in Chipp’s house (now a safe house for Indians attempting to return to India by way of Canada). The irony is that Chipp is being paid well as the conductor of this underground railroad assisting another minority to freedom.
The two protagonists are intensely engaged in dialogue filled with sharp wit, Black history, and total insight into the Recall situation, although Parmar remains intent on social structure rhetoric. Chipps says to Parmar, “The sons and daughters of immigrants don’t know white people the way Black people do. They are primary school when it comes to racism. We have a Ph.D.”
The conductor. like an Ornette Coleman solo, dances in a multiplicity of high notes and fluctuating improvs that keep audiences on the edge of their seats, wondering what’s next. It’s life in creative theater in real time. Just join Chipps on his couch, viewing the White Lightning Network (looks like FOX News?). In a world of insanity, sometimes it’s difficult to tell the sane from the insane. “The Conductor” points you in the right direction.
The tight-knit cast, like a swinging jazz ensemble, consists of Brain Simmons, who is extremely forceful as Warren Chipp; Imran Javaid, persuasive as Shashi Parmar; Laura Robards, playing a hilarious, convincing Hedda “Buttermilk” Duckbill, conservative TV host; Monisha Shiva, great as Lala Parmar (this is her third role in a Reed play); Kenya Wilson, offering various opinions as Melody Wells; and Emil Guillermo, taking on roles as the nosy neighbor and TV host Gabriel Notallde. “The Conductor” cast is compelling in one of this year’s most realistic plays, on or off Broadway.
For times and ticket information, visit the website theaterforthenewcity.net or call 212-254-1109.