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The Williams Center for the Arts will host some of the best sounds in contemporary Latin music with the Spanish Harlem Orchestra 8 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 3.
Tickets are free for students, $4 for faculty and staff, and $20 for the public. They can be obtained by calling the Williams Center box office at (610) 330-5009. This event is part of the College’s celebration of Latino Heritage Month.
The performance will open the College’s Sound Alternatives series. Future performers in the series are the Yamato Taiko Drummers Nov. 14, $22; the Shoghaken Folk Ensemble of Armenia Feb. 5, $18; and New York Voices March 29, $20. A subscription to the Sound Alternatives series costs $69, a savings of 15 percent off the single ticket price.
The Spanish Harlem Orchestra (SHO) comes to Easton from New York’s eastside El Barrio, the Spanish Harlem birthplace of salsa, Latin soul, and boogaloo. Directed by world renowned pianist and arranger, Oscar Hernandez, this group is the prevailing bearer of the revolutionary impact the Spanish Harlem neighborhood had on American music.
Since their arrival in 2000, the thirteen-member all-star SHO has reintroduced the classic sounds of New York City Salsa to music lovers worldwide.
From their 2002 debut album, Un Gran D�a En El Barrio, SHO revived the classic 1970 NYC sounds with a new hard hitting point-of-view. Fueled by great singers Frankie Vasquez, Herman Olivera, Ray De La Paz and special guest Jimmy Sabater, the songs included back-in-the-day hits like Tito Rodriguez’s “Mama Guela,” Willie Colon’s “La Banda,” and others. The album launched the band and garnered them a 2003 Grammy nomination for “Best Salsa Album” and a Latin Billboard Award for Salsa Album of the Year-Best New Group.
On their 2004 follow-up, Across 110th St., the Spanish Harlem Orchestra was augmented by the roaring trombones of Jimmy Bosch and Dan Reagan, singers Marco Bermudez, Willie Torres, Ray De La Paz, and special guest Ruben Blades, who Hern�ndez worked for in the 1990s as his musical director. It garnered the group its first Grammy Award in 2005 for “Best Salsa Album.”
Today, their third and latest album, United We Swing (2005), places Spanish Harlem Orchestra among Latin music’s greatest bands by paying tribute to a neighborhood romanticized in Leonard Bernstein’s “Westside Story” and Ben E. King’s, “A Rose in Spanish Harlem.”
The media sponsor for this performance is Public Radio Broadcaster WDIY-FM, 88.1.
The 2007-2008 Performance Series at Lafayette College is supported in part by gifts from Friends of the Williams Center for the Arts; by provisions of the Josephine Chidsey Williams Endowment, J. Mahlon and Grace Buck Fund, the Croasdale Fund, the Class of ’73 Fund, the Alan and Wendy Pesky Artist-in-Residence Program, the James Bradley Fund, and the Ed Brunswick Jazz Fund; and by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, Pennsylvania Performing Arts on Tour; the F.M. Kirby Foundation, the Dexter and Dorothy Baker Foundation, and the New England Foundation for the Arts.