Worldwinds is a collaborative performance bringing together GRAMMY award-winning pianist and composer Arturo O’Farrill and his Afro Latin Jazz Ensemble with two dynamic dance companies: LaTasha Barnes & The Continuum Collective and Soles of Duende. Over the past several years, O’Farrill has forged artistic collaborations with noted choreographers through Belongó’s Worldwinds residencies, which challenge the boundaries of style and medium. The evening’s program features newly choreographed classics and originals from the Afro Latin Jazz Ensemble’s repertoire, as well as new pieces inspired by the movement and steps of its guest companies.
Belongó (formerly the Afro Latin Jazz Alliance) is a New York based cultural organization dedicated to performing, educating about, and preserving the music of all of the Americas, emanating from African and indigenous roots, through the entry point of jazz. Belongó embraces its mission with a commitment to social justice, equity, inclusion, and the equality of all cultures worldwide. Belongó’s mission is reflected by its core values of cultural inclusiveness, ground-breaking creativity, social consciousness, excellence, and responsible stewardship, and purposeful engagement. Founded by pianist, composer, and educator Arturo O’Farrill in 2007, Belongó’s programs span the five New York City boroughs and beyond. New York performance season, presents intergenerational community events, provides year-round free music instruments and instruction to youth, and maintains a comprehensive archive of Latin jazz compositions.
GRAMMY Award-winning pianist, composer, and educator Arturo O’Farrill—leader of the “first family of Afro-Cuban Jazz” (New York Times)—was born in Mexico and grew up in New York City. Son of the late, great composer Chico O’Farrill, Arturo played piano in Carla Bley’s Big Band from 1979 through 1983 and earned a reputation as a soloist in groups led by Dizzy Gillespie, Lester Bowie, Wynton Marsalis, and Harry Belafonte. In 2002, he established the GRAMMY Award-winning Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra (ALJO) to bring the vital musical traditions of Afro Latin jazz to a wider general audience, and to greatly expand the contemporary Latin jazz big band repertoire through commissions to artists across a wide stylistic and geographic range. In March 2021, O’Farrill and the ALJO won their 7th GRAMMY for Four Questions, with Cornel West as guest orator. In September 2018, O’Farrill released his album, Fandango at the Wall: A Soundtrack for the United States, Mexico, and Beyond, which was also released as a documentary for HBO MAX. In 2019, O’Farrill was appointed Professor at The UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music in the Global Jazz Studies department and is currently the Associate Dean for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion. O’Farrill’s debut recording with Blue Note Records …dreaming in lions… was nominated for a 2022 GRAMMY Award in the “Best Instrumental Composition” category, and his album, Virtual Birdland (ZOHO), was nominated for “Best Latin Jazz Album.” In 2023, O’Farrill won a GRAMMY Award for Fandango at the Wall in New York in the “Best Latin Jazz Album” category.
Awarded a 2021 Bessie for Outstanding Performer, LaTasha Barnes is an internationally recognized dancer, choreographer, educator, and Tradition-bearer of Black American Social Dance from Richmond, VA. She is globally celebrated for her musicality, athleticism, and joyful presence throughout the cultural traditions she bears House, Hip-Hop, Waacking, Vernacular Jazz, and Lindy Hop, among them. Barnes’ expansive artistic, competitive, and performative skills have made her a frequent collaborator to Dorrance Dance, Singapore-based Timbre Arts Group, Ephrat Asherie Dance, and many more. The NY Times said of her most recent collaboration with Caleb Teicher in Swing Out: “Barnes is especially extraordinary for the way the past and the present can pass through her.”
A Brooklyn-born Puerto-Rican from New Haven, a Mexican Puerto-Rican Jew from the Lower East Side, and a Bengali Indian from Jersey walked on to the wooden floor & the rest? History. Bonded by their deep love of music, their crafts, and true connection, Soles of Duende is on a lifelong mission to elevate the joy and music of true collaboration across disciplines and the celebration of the forms they practice. Based in the sounds of Tap (Amanda Castro), Flamenco (Arielle Rosales) and Kathak (Brinda Guha), Soles of Duende’s fire is the spirit that lives within each of these women to celebrate their connection given their beautiful differences and to uplift the forms that made them.