Mass to Chano Pozo and Juan Formell will sound in Cuba

Mass to Chano Pozo and Juan Formell is the title of one of the concerts that stands out as highlights of the upcoming 38th edition of the 2023 Jazz Plaza International Festival in Cuba.

The show will take place on January 24, at 6:00 p.m. local time, in the Trillo park, Cayo Hueso neighborhood, in Central Havana, and will host the popular Los Van Van orchestra, Cuban percussionist based in the United States Pedrito Martínez and a group of special guests, according to the organizers of the event.

Martínez won the Thelonious Monk award for percussion, in Washington DC, he is one of the founding members of the band Yerba Buena and his album. The Pedrito Martínez Group earned, among other awards, a Grammy Award nomination.

The jazz festival in Cuba, from January 22 to 29, has among its attractions the participation of national and foreign musicians in recitals scheduled in various community spaces in this capital and Santiago de Cuba, the other venue for the event.

In that eastern Cuban city, Los Muñequitos de Matanzas will perform in the Martí and Moncada communities on January 27 and in the Santa Úrsula neighborhood on January 29. That day they will be at the Boulevard del Parque Dolores Giraldo Piloto and Klimax, Experimental Jazz, feat Splendor, among others.

During a recent meeting with the press, the president of the organizing committee of the Festival, Víctor Rodríguez, stressed that the event will be a success despite the difficulties the country is going through.

The also director of the National Center for Popular Music highlighted the participation of important Cuban musicians and from other countries.

According to the newspaper of the appointment, in addition to the Cuban artists are expected from Argentina, Brazil, Cameroon, Spain, France, Congo, Mexico, Italy, Germany, Portugal, Peru, Canada, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Norway, United Kingdom, South Africa and the United States, with the greatest representation.

The Cuban Vice Minister of Culture, Fernando Jacomino, highlighted the more than 100 concerts that will take place in more than 11 stages during those days and thanked the presence of international musicians and Cubans living in other nations, who will travel to the island despite the pressures against.

In this sense, he stressed that this is the festival of Cuban jazz players wherever they live and highlighted the joint effort of Cuban institutions to make a festival of music of the highest quality.

In this capital, the concerts will have as venues the National, Martí, América, Lázaro Peña theaters, the National Museum of Fine Arts, the Bertolt Brecht Cultural Center, the Cuba Pavilion, the Plaza House of Culture, the Cuban Art Factory and the Pink Hall of the Tropical.

The National Music Award (2012) winner Bobby Carcassés, founder of Jazz Plaza, warned that the next edition will have more locations than on other occasions and invited the Cuban public not to miss the presentations of renowned national and foreign instrumentalists.