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Guitar Sapiens
The Peruvian guitarist Yuri Juárez sets scenes and drafts landscapes, with sounds put down, like paint, by his expert fingers. He is the guitarist for the Gabriel Alegría Afro-Peruvian Sextet, for whom he calls up images and implies great distances, providing song after song, whether studio or live, with a visual field uncannily provoked by…
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Melissa Aldana
South Americans get the saxophone in a way that gets to me. It started with Gato Barbieri and Last Tango in Paris, his tenor paradoxically sharp and lush, a bite and a kiss. It stayed with me, like an inoculation against its own forgetting, since first I heard it. Then, a few years ago, when…
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10
I haven’t seen the Gabriel Alegría Afro-Peruvian Sextet so elegant, in sound or deportment, as they were Monday night at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola. The spot has an elegance in its own right, with a view of Central Park and a good, Southern inspired menu. The band has appeared there before, in a series sponsored by…
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The Sextet at Dizzy’s
The Gabriel Alegria Afro-Peruvian Sextet’s “Caras” hit the crowd at the start of Monday night’s second set at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola like an acoustic sandstorm. So blinding was the effect that if there was an eyebrow raised anywhere in the room by the jazz savvy Lincoln Center audience, it was impossible to see. And so…
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Harmony in Process
Among the visual artists producing work to the music of the Gabriel Alegría Afro-Peruvian Sextet at HARMONY IN PROCESS Saturday night at ShapeShifter Lab was Patti Maciesz, who sat center stage and made little illustrated tags for the audience in response to what she was hearing and seeing. This is the one she handed to…
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Jazz and Sushi
The Gabriel Alegría Afro-Peruvian Sextet is an important band, and it should not come as a surprise that no smallish house in which they perform will be unpacked. It has doubtless happened before, but Saturday’s concert – of two separately vended sets – was the first time I have seen a full house at the…
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Gabriel Alegría Afro-Peruvian Sextet
Last night at Nuyorican Poets Cafe, the Gabriel Alegria Afro-Peruvian Sextet outdid itself with a septet of special features: (1) The rare presence in New York of the band’s original drummer, Hugo Alcázar, as evidenced in this photo, a sharp, witty, assertive artist in every way; (2) a guest appearance by the notable jazz pianist…
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Tutuma Social Club
The Tutuma Social Club has always been at the top of my list for out-of-town visitors and any in-towners who haven’t discovered it on their own yet, especially on a night when the house band was playing. If the Gabriel Alegria Afro-Peruvian Sextet isn’t the best jazz band you’ve never heard of, then it may…