Music of the Americas: Brazilian Jazz, Chilean Rap, New Music

Tuesday, March 29, 10 a.m.

Chilean rapper Dania Neko lives in Valparaíso. She has released two albums: Depura in 2015, which was nominated for best urban music album by Pulsar 2016, and Vertigo in 2019. Her music searches new sonorities that merge Latin American music, folklore, as well as soul and rap. In 2020, she released Coraje, an album that fuses rap and flamenco, a project she has developed over the past three years in collaboration with prominent Flamenco musicians in Chile. Current projects include the duo Saire, with Habitual, and a series of singles developed by producer Jaime Casetti, featuring an energetic electronic rap sound, and loaded with social content.

Wednesday, March 30, 10 a.m.

Born and trained in New York, pianist and composer Cliff Korman met the legendary Brazilian clarinetist Paulo Moura over 30 years ago at the Creative Music Studio’s World Music Institute in Woodstock. From their friendship and musical partnership a series of concerts and recordings was born: Mood Ingênuo: The Dream of Pixinguinha and Duke Ellington, Rhapsody in Bossa, on the music of Gershwin and Jobim, Gafiera Jazz, a revealing commentary on the history of Brazilian ballroom, and the Gnattali/Monk Project, exploring two of the most influential American pianists of the century. Now based in Brazil, Korman teaches at the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais in Belo Horizonte, where he is assisting in the implementation of a course in Popular Music Studies, and under the auspices of the Instituto Paulo Moura is music coordinator of the project to digitize Moura’s archive.

Korman was on En Casa in 2020, and before that he'd been on our stage with saxophonist Billy Drewes, bassist Augusto Mattoso, and drummer Pascoal Meirelles in 2013 paying homage to Moura at a Music of the Americas concert at Le Poisson Rouge in Greenwich Village. From that show, organized in collaboration with Savassi Festival, we share Moura's “Tempos felizes.”

Friday, April 1, 7 p.m.

The vocal ensemble Ekmeles, led by Jeff Gavett, gave the first in-person Music of the Americas concert of 2022 at St. Ignatius of Antioch in New York in February. The program included pieces by Tania León, Hilda Paredes, and Marc Sabat, interspersed with movements from Mauricio Kagel's collection Der Turm zu Babel.

Watch here.

The MetLife Foundation Music of the Americas concert series is made possible by the generous support of Presenting Sponsor MetLife Foundation. The Spring 2022 Music program is also supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, and by the Howard Gilman Foundation.