Cuban-born jazz pianist and composer Fabian Almazan and his ensemble perform Flamboyan and Almazan’s own composition Alcanza, a vibrant multi-movement suite that fuses jazz and contemporary classical chamber music. Founder and director of Biophilia Records, he has worked tirelessly towards ensuring a continued dialogue of awareness concerning music and environmental justice.
Of the piece, Almazan says, “Alcanza” (Spanish for “Reach”) is a nine-movement suite of music that deals with those brief moments in our lives in which within a blink of an eye, everything changes—or at least gives us a remarkable new perception of our condition. It also deals with the process of finding our own path as we go from childhood into adulthood; reflecting the beauty, frustrations, and paradoxes of modern-day life and not giving up on reaching for everything in life that brings us joy and love.”
THE ARTIST
The New York-based, Cuban-born jazz pianist/composer Fabian Almazan is moving quickly, and he’s changing the genre along the way. Founder and director of Biophilia Records, he has worked tirelessly towards ensuring a continued dialogue of awareness concerning music and environmental justice.
Almazan has toured his music extensively as well as accompanied artists such as Terence Blanchard, Gretchen Parlato, Linda May Han Oh, Justin Brown, John Hollenbeck, Mark Guiliana, Dave Douglass, Chris Dingman, Ben Wendel, Matt Stevens, David Sanchez, Stefon Harris and Ambrose Akinmusire among others.
Awards include a Grammy nomination for his work on Terence Blanchard’s E-Collective album, Breathless, the SWR New Jazz Meeting commission, the Copland Fund, the Jerome Fund for Emerging Composers Award, the Jazz Gallery Residency, Cintas Foundation Award in Composition and the Sundance Composers’ Lab. Almazan has released four albums under his name with a fifth due out in June 2019. Alcanza (June 2017), which received five stars from DownBeat Magazine, was commissioned by Chamber Music America and features a nine-movement suite for voice, string quartet, piano, bass and drums.