Pianist Manuel Valera with The Tom Tallitsch Quartet at Miles Jazz Cafe (NYC) on Thursday, April 7th

Source: Tom Tallitsch Productions, LLC
April 4, 2011
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Miles Jazz Cafe NYC
Thursday, April 7th
9:30-11:30pm
212 East 52nd Street
New York, NY 10022-6201
(212) 371-7657
Subway: Lexington Av/53 St

Tom Tallitsch

saxophone, tenor
b.1974

" data-original-title="" title="">Tom Tallitsch—Saxophones

Manuel Valera

piano
b.1980

" data-original-title="" title="">Manuel Valera—Piano

Peter Brendler

bass

" data-original-title="" title="">Peter Brendler—Bass

" data-original-title="" title="">David Ashkenazy—Drums

Cuban pianist, bandleader, composer and arranger, Manuel Valera is in the forefront of contemporary modern jazz. He represents the next generation of great performers and composers. His sound is fresh, inviting and evocative, and his goal is to forge innovative sounds that bring a vitality and newness to the idioms of jazz and Latin jazz. He is constantly workshopping musical ideas to develop new composition and arranging techniques that bring together Cuban, Puerto Rican, Brazilian and various jazz styles and forms.

His musical training started at an early age at Havana's Manuel Saumell Conservatory where he originally studied classical saxophone. It wasn't until emigrating to the United States in December 1994 when Valera switched to the piano. He began composing in 2000 while enrolled in the jazz program at the New School in New York where he studied, among others, with

Reggie Workman

bass
b.1937

" data-original-title="" title="">Reggie Workman,

George Garzone

saxophone, tenor
b.1950

" data-original-title="" title="">George Garzone,

Jane Ira Bloom

saxophone, soprano

" data-original-title="" title="">Jane Ira Bloom,

Gerard D'Angelo

piano
b.1954

" data-original-title="" title="">Gerard D'Angelo and Richie Bierach.

In late October 2003, just two days after his 23rd birthday, Valera recorded his debut and critically acclaimed CD, Forma Nueva—a modern jazz CD of contemporary originals featuring bassist

John Patitucci

bass
b.1959

" data-original-title="" title="">John Patitucci, drummers

Horacio "El Negro" Hernandez

drums
b.1963

" data-original-title="" title="">Horacio "El Negro" Hernandez,

Bill Stewart

drums
b.1966

" data-original-title="" title="">Bill Stewart and

Seamus Blake

saxophone
b.1970

" data-original-title="" title="">Seamus Blake on saxophones. Forma Nueva received nationwide radio airplay and garnered strong reviews in the jazz and music press Billboard, Jazztimes, Jazziz, All Music Guide and Latin Beat among others. The following year, he recorded a second project entitled Historia for Fresh Sounds New Talent featuring Ben Street (bass) and Antonio Sanchez (drums) as well as Seamus Blake (saxophone) on two tracks.

His latest recording Melancolia, released in March 2006 featuring

Antonio Sanchez

drums
b.1971

" data-original-title="" title="">Antonio Sanchez (drums),

Ben Street

bass

" data-original-title="" title="">Ben Street (bass),

Seamus Blake

saxophone
b.1970

" data-original-title="" title="">Seamus Blake (saxophone),

Luisito Quintero

percussion

" data-original-title="" title="">Luisito Quintero (percussion) and a string quartet, is a special project that fuses classical concepts with world and Latin rhythms in the jazz idiom.

Tom Tallitsch

saxophone, tenor
b.1974

" data-original-title="" title="">Tom Tallitsch is a New York-based tenor and soprano saxophonist with two of his three albums on Origin/OA2 Records. He plays regularly in New York and Philadelphia, and tours throughout the east coast and U.S, and hosts a weekly Jazz Radio Show out of Trenton, NJ. Tallitsch has had feature articles in All About Jazz, Downbeat Magazine, JazzTimes, JazzReview.com, The Village Voice, and other regional and national print media. In 2010 his album Perspective rose to #27 on The Jazzweek US radio charts. Some of the musicians that he has performed with in New York and Philadelphia are