Eddie Palmieri has been at the forefront of jazz and Latin genres for five decades. The nine-time Grammy Award-winner and 2013 National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master will perform with his Latin jazz septet in Goucher College’s Kraushaar Auditorium on Sunday, March 9, at 7 p.m.
This event is open to the public, but tickets are required for all attendees. Tickets are free for Goucher students, faculty, staff, and alumnae/i; $10 for general admission. Reservations must be made in advance by logging on to www.goucher.edu/tickets or by calling 410-337-6333.
Born in Spanish Harlem in 1936, Palmieri began piano studies at an early age, as did his celebrated older brother, the late salsa legend and pianist, Charlie Palmieri. At age 11, Eddie Palmieri auditioned at Weil Recital Hall, next door to Carnegie Hall. His first professional work came playing timbales at age 13 in his uncle’s orchestra.
Now a titan of Latin Jazz, Palmieri has been a musical force since the 1950s, when he hosted the legendary mambo shows at New York’s Palladium Ballroom. His playing skillfully fuses the rhythm of Puerto Rico with the melody and complexity of his jazz influences, including Thelonious Monk and fellow NEA Jazz Masters Herbie Hancock and McCoy Tyner.
Palmieri is a groundbreaking composer and arranger who has carved a signature musical style that consistently challenges the boundaries of both salsa and Latin jazz. Having played with numerous luminaries, Palmieri continues to compose, play, and influence musicians around the world.
He has one of the most actively touring salsa and Latin jazz orchestras to date, tours of which have taken him to Europe, Asia, Australia, Latin America, North Africa, and throughout the Caribbean. He has been called “the most consistently innovative artist in Afro-Cuban music in the United States for the past 30 years.”
For more than five decades, the annual Henry and Ruth Blaustein Rosenberg Lecture-Performance has featured notable musicians, including Simone Dinnerstein, Leon Fleisher, Nathan Gunn, Yo-Yo Ma, Aaron Copland, Ravi Shankar, and Cyrus Chestnut. Established in 1959 with a gift from the Louis and Henrietta Blaustein Foundation, the Rosenberg Lecture-Performance honors the late Henry and Ruth Blaustein Rosenberg, the latter a 1921 Goucher alumna.