“The Annex Sessions” Wednesday, April 24, 2024, 6-8:30pm will continue our music series held at El Cerrito Natural Grocery Company Prepared Food Annex (The Annex)
Javier Navarrette’s Latin Jazz Trio
Featuring:
Marco Diaz- piano, trumpet
Anthony Blea- violin, percussion
Javier Navarrette- percussion, vocal
Danceable Latin Jazz music with infectious “Charanga Grooves”!
Marco Diaz
Marco Diaz was born and raised in San Francisco and was introduced to the trumpet in the fourth grade at E.R. Taylor Elementary School. His formal training in both piano and trumpet began at the age of 14. He earned a scholarship from the Community Music Center in San Francisco and began playing professionally at the age of 17 throughout the Bay Area with various Latin Jazz, Salsa, Reggae, and R&B bands. Upon graduating from high school, he continued his studies at San Francisco State University pursing a Bachelor of Arts in Popular Music and a minor in Economics.
In addition to his studies Marco has been influenced by Afro-Cuban music through world renowned musicians, such as, Jesus Diaz, who he played and recorded with for eight years, John Santos, Orestes Vilato, Edgardo Cambon, and Carlos Caro.
Today, Marco is part of the faculty at the Community Music Center in San Francisco and has been a part of the SFJAZZ teaching artist program since 2017. He is an accomplished recording musician who has shared the stage with Grammy Award winning artist, Israel “Cachao” Lopez, Nelson Gonzales, Jimmy Bosch, Pete “El Conde” Rodriguez, Ska Cubano (Europe), Tito Rojas, Nino Segarra, Anthony Cruz, Anthony Blea, Jovino Santos Neto, Joe Santiago, and is an integral member of the John Santos sextet, and the musical director for Bobi Cespedes. Marco has participated in the San Francisco Symphony AIM program since 2000 and currently produces records and performs music throughout the country while also co-leading Vission Latina, an Afro-Caribbean dance band, and director of his own quartet, The Marco Diaz Quartet.
In 2011, Marco Diaz was part of the faculty at Jazz Camp West. He toured the San Juan Islands off the coast of Washington State with Bobi Cespedes, teaching children and adults the roots of Afro-Cuban music. Marco also performed at the San Francisco, Tanglewood, and Monterey Jazz Festivals, and the Smithsonian Museum with world renowned ethno-musicologist, John Santos and his Sextet. In the Fall,
Marco began his ninth season with the San Francisco Symphony’s AIM (adventures in music) program.
Anthony Blea
Anthony Blea, master violinist, is a veteran performer, composer, and instructor, whose performances have graced the stages, and enriched the musical community of the San Francisco Bay Area for over four decades. Awarded a full scholarship to attend the San Francisco Conservatory of Music at age 11, He would later travel to New York and study at the Manhattan School of Music where he received his Bachelor’s degree, and return to the Bay Area, to receive his Master’s degree from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.
His work in classical and modern music with hallmark musical institutions like The San Francisco Opera Orchestra, and the Bay Chamber Symphony, is made all the more exceptional when viewed alongside his Incredible body of work in the field of Afro Cuban Music, where he has established himself as one of a handful of players in the world, who have actually mastered the subtle and beautiful genre of Charanga music, an amalgam of both European classical music and African rhythms.
Performances with iconic artists like Israel “Cachao” Lopez, Ray Charles, Boz Scaggs and Leonard Bernstein, have garnered him the attention of the press and music lovers alike and earned him a well-deserved reputation as the bay area’s best multi-talented violinist
Having spent more than 30 years perfecting his teaching technique in instruction, solo mentoring, and group/solo clinics, Anthony is an involved and caring teacher, instilling in his students not only a love of established musical forms, but also encouraging experimentation, and their own unique voices, on an instrument that requires the highest level of discipline, and instruction. Most of all, Anthony is known for his good humor, warmth, and lifelong love of the instrument that has shaped and defined his life.
The Violin. Instrument of joy.
Javier Navarrette
Javier Navarrette is a professional percussionist, musician, composer, arranger and educator living in Oakland, California, specializing in Afro-Caribbean music. Javier’s performance and recording career spans over three decades. He has played and studied with many of the greats in the Afro-Latin music tradition and has recorded on three Grammy-nominated albums with John Santos and the Machete Ensemble/ Folklorico Kindembo.
Javier teaches music in public/private schools and in adult workshops. For the past 10 years, Javier has been teaching with Living Jazz Children’s Music Project in the Oakland public schools and at the summer Jam Camp for Children.
Amongst Javier’s groups are Javier Navarrette’s Latin Jazz Trio and Javier Navarrette’s Socially Distant Friends.
In 2021-22, coming out of the pandemic, Javier produced Modúpue Sundays with Arts at the Basin, Brooklyn Basin, Oakland. He currently produces the Neighborhood Sessions at The Annex in El Cerrito, and a pilot program at the Alameda Radium Runway Project, presenting the Bay Area’s legendary musicians in the Afro-Latin music tradition.
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The Natural Grocery Company is proud to present this series in partnership with SunJams and Javier Navarrette Music Productions.
SunJams is committed to funding children’s music education in underserved public elementary schools. Your donation will help support this ongoing program.
All of the proceeds will go directly to our network of local musicians, each of whom have been severely impacted by the lack of events during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Whether you donate $10, $100, or $1000 – any amount helps and will allow us to keep bringing music to our community! As always, your donation to SunJams 501(c)3 may qualify as tax exempt.
Javier Navarrette Music Productions continues to bring live music to several venues around the Bay Area. Javier has been a professional musician and music educator in the Oakland Unified School District for the past 20 years. Over the past few years Navarrette has produced outdoors events that have proven instrumental in enabling musicians to deal with some of the fallout of the pandemic and shutdown that followed.
COVID RELATED SAFETY MEASURES
Please be safe. Feel free to wear a mask if you prefer.
TICKETS
Tickets are NOT required for this venue, you can simply come in, order food and beverages at the Annex counter and pay at the registers.