Bobby Sanabria & Ascensión

$15 general public; $12 senior citizens, Wesleyan faculty/staff/alumni, non-Wesleyan students; $8 Wesleyan students, youth under 18

Led by multiple Grammy Award-nominated drummer, percussionist, composer, arranger, and educator Bobby Sanabria, his ensemble Ascensión has been critically-acclaimed for its Pan-Latino approach to Latin jazz. Encompassing Afro-Cuban, Brazilian and traditions from Venezuela, Colombia, Sanabria’s ancestral homeland of Puerto Rico and beyond, as well as straight-ahead jazz and the avant-garde, Ascensión is a musical laboratory that is constantly exploring the rich cultural and spiritual roots and connections between the jazz and Latin jazz continuums.

Sanabria has worked with every major historical figure in the field. The diverse range of legendary artists he has toured and recorded with includes Dizzy Gillespie, Mongo Santamaria, Tito Puente, Paquito D’Rivera, Henry Threadgill, Ray Barretto, Randy Brecker, Chico O’Farrill, Larry Harlow, Max Roach’s M’Boom, Celia Cruz, and the “father of Afro-Cuban jazz,” maestro Mario Bauzá. Sanabria’s experiences make him uniquely qualified to lead Ascensión, a group that has been hailed by K. Leander Williams of Time Out Magazine as “…the most exciting Latin jazz band since Cuba’s Irakere.”

This concert is the conclusion of the 22nd annual Wesleyan Jazz Orchestra Weekend.

The concert opens with a 45-minute set performed by members of the Wesleyan Jazz Orchestra, directed by Professor of Music and African American Studies Jay Hoggard ’76, MA ’91.

Bobby Sanabria previously performed at Wesleyan as part of Eli Fountain’s Percussion Discussion in April 2017.

Profile

A graduate of the Berklee College of Music, drummer, percussionist, composer, arranger, documentary film producer, activist, radio host, writer, and nominated for multiple GRAMYY Awards as a leader, Bobby Sanabria is a native Nuyorican son of the South Bronx. His versatility as both a drummer and percussionist has become legendary. He’s performed and recorded with every major figure in the history of Latin jazz, jazz, and salsa, with such legends as Dizzy Gillespie, Tito Puente, Mongo Santamaria, Eddie Palmieri, Paquito D’Rivera, Candido, Charles McPherson, Larry Harlow, Ruben Blades, Celia Cruz, and the father of Afro-Cuban jazz, Mario Bauzá, as his drummer for nine years touring and recording on his major GRAMMY Award-nominated albums.

Sanabria is the leader of Quarteto Aché, Sexteto Ibiano, Ascensión, and his Multiverse Big Band. His big band albums have all been nominated for GRAMMY Awards for a total of nine nominations, including  Afro-Cuban Dream: Live & In Clave!!!, Big Band Urban Folktales, Multiverse (two GRAMMY Award nominations), and West Side Story Reimagined, which was awarded the Jazz Journalists Record of the Year Award in 2019 and hailed as a masterpiece by The Wall Street Journal, as well as Kenya Revisited Live!!!and Tito Puente Masterworks Live!!!, with Sanabria conducting the Manhattan School of Music Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra, including his most recent GRAMMY Award nomination for VOX HUMANA with his Multiverse Big Band for the 2024 GRAMMYS.

DRUM! Magazine named Sanabria Percussionist of the Year (2005); he was named Percussionist of the Year by the Jazz Journalists Association in 2011 and 2013. He has been named one of the top ten percussionists in the world by the readers and critics of Downbeat magazine for the last 10 years, and was a member of Max Roach’s legendary percussion ensemble M’BOOM. Sanabria has composed the music for several award-winning, critically-acclaimed documentaries: From Mambo to Hip Hip: A South Bronx Tale(2006) where he was also a producer, consultant, and on air personality; Some Girls (2017); and La Madrina: The Savage Life of Loraine Padilla (2020). Other documentaries he has been featured in on-screen and acted as a consultant/producer for include The Palladium: Where Mambo Was King (2003), Latin Music U.S.A. (2006), We Like It Like That: The Story of Latin Boogaloo (2015), and Let’s Get The Rhythm (2016). In 2012, Sanabria was selected by legendary jazz pianist Herbie Hancock to represent Latin jazz with his Quarteto Ache’ as part of the first Annual UNESCO International Day of Jazz at the United Nations.

Among Sanabria’s numerous awards include induction into the 2006 Bronx Walk of Fame, the 2018 Jazz Education Network’s LeJENds of Latin Jazz Award, and being honored by his name being read into the U.S. Congressional Record by Congressman Dennis Kucinich of Ohio in 2008. In 2019, Sanabria was named Godfather/Padrino of the National Puerto Rican Day Parade in New York City. He was recently bestowed an Honorary Doctorate by Lehman College in New York. Sanabria is on the faculty of New School University (his 28th year), is the Co-Artistic Director of the Bronx Music Heritage Center/Bronx Music Hall, and is the host of the Latin Jazz Cruise on WBGO FM, America’s leading jazz station.

Sanabria’s lifetime dedication to spreading the history and culture of jazz and Latin jazz to the general public as a performer, as well as educating a new generation of players, composers, and arrangers, has no parallel. His new critically-acclaimed double CD with his Multiverse Big Band, VOX HUMANA, recorded live at Dizzy’s Club in New York City, features vocalists Janis Siegel, Antoinette Montague, and Jennifer Jade Ledesna, and was nominated for a GRAMMY Award for Best Latin Jazz Recording (2024).