Ray Gonzalez will Headline Free Connecticut Music Festival
HARTFORD, Conn. -- New England’s reigning salsa big band, Ray Gonzalez y Su Orquesta, is the main stage headliner at the third annual Trinity College Samba Fest hosted by Trinity College and taking place Saturday, May 2, from 12:00 to 4:00 p.m. The schedule for the free festival includes performances by regional musicians and interactive entertainment for children.
Other feature acts are De 4 Ahwee & Co., a locally based West Indian steel band with a reputation rapidly on the rise, and the Trinity Samba Ensemble, a drumming and singing group that performs several genres of Afro-Brazilian music and is directed by Professor Eric Galm. Guest artist Gleide Cambria, a dancer from Bahia, Brazil, will perform with the Samba Ensemble. [Note: Artist biographies follow.]
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Ray Gonzalez will headline the 2009 Trinity
Samba Fest. (photo: Sharon Polanco) |
Samba Fest provides interactive entertainment for children, with games, sports, and crafts organized by the Trinity Fun Fair (co-chairs Margot Gianis ’10 and Juliana Sheldon ’09) and by Trinity Athletics.
An open-air event, Samba Fest is held on the Trinity College campus, between Broad and Summit Streets, near New Britain Avenue (specifically, the Mather Quadrangle in front of Austin Arts Center). In case of rain, Samba Fest will be moved to the Vernon Social Center, 114 Vernon Street, which is also on the Trinity College campus. Nearby CT Transit bus routes are the 37, 39, and 61. (For bus schedule, call CT Transit at 860-525-9181.) Free parking is available at Trinity.
Samba Fest is underwritten by Trinity College’s Departments of Music, International Studies, History, and Athletics; Annual Community Events Staff (ACES); The Offices of Multicultural Affairs, Community Services, and Campus Life; The Austin Arts Center Guest Artist Series; Latin American and Caribbean Studies Major; PRESHCO—Programa de Estudios Hispánicos en Córdoba; Center for Urban and Global Studies; Campus Climate Committee; Community Learning Initiative; Women and Gender Resource Action Center; Chartwells; and WRTC 89.3 FM Radio.
Telemundo is the media sponsor of Samba Fest.
Samba Fest will be simulcast on WRTC 89.3 FM.
Admission to Samba Fest is free, with an optional contribution of a non-perishable food item for a local food pantry suggested. For more information, please phone 860-297-2199 or visit www.trincoll.edu/artsattrinity.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Ray González has more than 35 years of experience as a trumpeter, conductor, arranger, and composer. Both his 2006 CD, “Yo tengo lo que te gusta” (Flor De Rumba 23869) and the 2007 CD re-issue of “Ray Gonzalez Y Su Banda” (Salsa International 1041) are “Editor’s Picks” on the international Latin music web site, www.descarga.com.
Additionally, Gonzalez has worked with Tito Puente, Charlie Palmieri, Kako, Victor Paz, Giovanni Hidalgo, Charlie Sepúlveda, and Ismael Rivera, among others. The Hartford Symphony Orchestra and the New Haven Symphony Orchestra have commissioned works from him and have collaborated with him on programs highlighting music of the Americas. He serves as music director for Guakía, Inc. and Guakía’s youth Latin jazz orchestra “Guakibomjazz.”
De 4 Ahwee & Co. is a West Indian steel band that began as a quartet and expanded into a seven-piece ensemble in 2006. The group features a lead tenor pan that plays the melody, which is joined by two sets of double-second pans and guitar pans that create harmonic accompaniment in lower registers. The steel drums are supported by electric bass, and the rhythm is rounded out with drums and percussion, comprising the “engine room.” De 4 Ahwee (Creole for “The Four of Us”) & Co. embraces rhythm and blues, soul, country, gospel, calypso, and soca, and steeps these styles in the musical flavor of the islands.
The band was founded by Sandra and Cadet Roach, and later joined by Curtis Greenidge. Curtis's uncle, Robert Greenidge, helps to produce the musical arrangements for the Desperados, one of Trinidad's foremost steel bands.
Trinity Samba Ensemble, directed by professor Eric Galm, derives its repertory from the batucada, a drumming group that plays samba music during the annual pre-Lenten carnaval celebrations. The batucada is the heart and soul of the Rio de Janeiro carnaval parading associations known as escolas de samba (samba schools), and can number up to 500 musicians, keeping a steady beat for some 3,000 to 5,000 participants.
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Trinity's Samba Ensemble (photo: Phil Kennedy) |
Trinity Samba’s performances feature music sung in Portuguese, as well as participatory call-and-response songs for non-Portuguese speaking audiences. The Samba Ensemble plays a variety of percussion instruments such as the surdo (similar to a bass drum); tamborim (small frame drum); agogô (double-bell); ganzá (shaker); and the ensemble is directed by musical cues from the repinique, the “master drum” of the ensemble. Trinity Samba Ensemble also features electric guitar, bass, and keyboards, which add harmonic layers to the sounds of multi-voiced singing and drumming.
Gleide Cambria (guest artist) is a Brazilian dancer-choreographer who was born in Ilhéus, Bahia, which has both a historic and living connection with African culture. She is also an initiate of the Afro-Brazilian candomblé religion in the cult house of her grandmother. With more than 20 years of experience in a variety of Afro-Brazilian dance forms, she mixes elements of the maracatu, jongo, coco, samba de roda, candomblé, and other traditional dances with contemporary dance technique in her choreography. For 12 years she was the choreographer and a dancer for “Bale Afro Dilazenze,” a dance ensemble she founded for the largest “Bloco Afro” (Afrocentric carnival group) in Ilhéus, Bahia.
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