Jazz Plaza: Yosvany Terry to Visit Art Schools

The National Center for Art Schools (Cneart) announced that the prestigious musician and pedagogue Yosvany Terry will offer a series of jazz and popular music concerts and workshops at several training institutions, as a prelude to the 41st edition of the International Jazz Plaza Festival.

The initiative, where Terry will be accompanied by outstanding local musicians such as percussionist Oliver Valdés, pianist Tony Rodríguez, and bassist Roberto Álvarez, aims to enrich the artistic training of students in Havana, Artemisa, Mayabeque, and Matanzas through direct contact with one of the undisputed exponents of Cuban music on the international stage.

A bearer of Afro-Cuban musical traditions, a virtuoso saxophonist, and a prolific composer, Terry is a graduate of the National School of Art (ENA) in Havana. After settling in the United States in 1999, he studied composition and orchestration at the Juilliard School and The New School for Music in New York City.

His work has been presented at international festivals in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, South America, and the United States. In his role as an educator, he has taught at The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music.

Currently, Terry serves as Director of Jazz Ensembles and Senior Lecturer at Harvard University. He is supported by prestigious institutions that have commissioned works from him, including the Ford Foundation, Harlem Stage—for the opera Makandal—MAP Fund, Jerome Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Creative Capital, The Idea Opera Residency at the National Opera Center, and Chamber Music America.

Various accolades have shaped his artistic mastery, among which the Doris Duke Artist Award (2015), a Grammy nomination in the Best Latin Jazz Album category (2015), the Creative Capital Award (2017), and the Brandon Fradd Fellowship from the CINTAS Foundation in musical composition (2013–2014) stand out, in addition to his successful discography: We Have Iré (2021), Ancestral Memories (2018), New Throned King (2017), Okónkolo (2017), Today's Opinion (2013), and Metamorphosis (2006).

This visit to the land that saw his birth as a musician during the days of one of the world's most influential jazz festivals will represent an invaluable reference for his audience—the students in question—not only for his artistic excellence but also for his commitment to pedagogy and the preservation of his musical roots.

Tomorrow, Tuesday, he will bring his experience to the Eduardo Abela Professional School of Art in Artemisa and the Paulita Concepción School in Havana; on the 14th, he will be at the Tata Güines School in Bejucal, Mayabeque; and on the 15th, he will arrive in the Athens of Cuba (Matanzas) to interact with students at the Alfonso Pérez Isaac Vocational School of Art.

This fruitful journey through the classrooms where he once trained and through other sister schools symbolizes a cycle of feedback and contribution, in which the artist returns to inspire and contribute to the development of new generations of Cuban musicians, expresses Cneart, reaffirming its commitment to training excellence and connecting its student universe with the foremost exponents of national and world culture.