Latin Jazz Pioneer Visits Campus

Joining the ranks of Count Basie, Duke Ellington, and Thelonious Monk, nine-time Grammy Award winner Eddie Palmieri became Harvard’s latest artist in residence this week, continuing the Office of the Arts’ (OFA) year-long project, The Afro-Cuban Connection.

“It’s been a tremendous honor. I had been treated with the highest degree of consideration, working with the students and [Director of Bands] Tom Everett, who is absolutely wonderful, and everyone who is involved in the preparation for the concert—and I appreciate that in my heart,” Palmieri said.

Palmieri’s residency included “A Conversation with Eddie Palmieri” on April 13, moderated by host of WBUR-FM’s “¡Con Salsa!” José Massó, and a concert in Sanders Theatre with the Harvard Jazz Band and guest artist Brian Lynch.

The Office of the Arts recognized Palmieri for his immense contribution to the formation of the Latin jazz genre by mapping traditional Latin dance beats into an American jazz context.

“When I started, there was no Latin Jazz category, and I took an octet and showed the importance of having a Latin Jazz category. And now we find the jazz artists themselves in our category,” avPalmieri said.

Beyond the wealth of musical experience and knowledge that Palmieri offered to students, he also presented a medium for thinking about the implications of Latin jazz.

“His presence and his creations are such a mixture of tradition, his personality, but also the ethnic influences he has absorbed.

And so I think that it really pulls in the kind of disciplines the students are constantly working with, social, history, economic, cultural investigation, and we get all of these in one artist,” said Everett.

This broader social context was one of the themes addressed in “A Conversation with Eddie Palmieri.” In the hour-long discussion, Palmieri talked about growing up in the Bronx, how he got into jazz, and the sounds that influenced him at the time he was growing up.

Massó seamlessly moderated the discussion, integrating memories from his own childhood and relevant clips of Palmieri’s music, and intermittently holding up original records from his collection of the more than thirty albums that Palmieri has produced.

Palmieri entertained the audience with his early memories. The son of an electrician and a seamstress, Palmieri grew up playing stick ball and listening to the radio and the music played by his older brother Charlie, who started playing professionally at age 14.

“Eventually my father made it with my family and opened up a luncheonette and we made it play mambo, and I was the one who would pick the records for the jukebox. I was the soda jerk and that was the hippest jukebox in the world,” recalled Palmieri.

Palmieri hoped that his residency would offer the students he worked with in the Jazz Band a memorable experience.

“These young men are going through a lot of preparation. They’re going to be politicians, and doctors, and physicists. When you meet them you know you’re talking to an incredible and talented person,” Palmieri said.

“But music becomes a part of them and opens up another world for them,” he continued. “Its something that they will never forget, being able to share the bandstand with [musicians like] us.”

The students who got to work with Palmieri in preparation for the concert agreed.

According to Jazz Band member Noah L. Nathan ’09, “It’s an amazing opportunity for us, because even though most, if not all of us, aren’t going to be professional musicians, it’s an incredible opportunity to work with people of this stature and learn from their expansive body of experience.”