For the first time, World Citizen Artists is celebrating World Jazz Day! We are proud to present this exclusive interview with Yosvany Terry, who has been one of our first supporters and part of the WCA Jury during the WCA competition 2014, along with Playing For Change Foundation and Belgravia Gallery. In the video above, Yosvany Terry speaks about the role of Jazz in the World, and why he joined World Citizen Artists. Yosvany has been extremely generous with his time and gave a lot in his interview when meeting our WCA team in Paris.
Since his arrival in New York in 1999, Cuban saxophonist/percussionist/composer Yosvany Terry’s has been making a difference in contemporary music. His innovative work, a unique confluence of Cuban roots music and jazz, “has helped redefine Latin jazz as a complex new idiom” The New York Times”.
Born into a musical family in Camaguey, Cuba. Yosvany went on to classical music training in Havana at the prestigious National School of Arts (ENA) and Amadeo Roldan Conservatory. After graduating, Yosvany worked with major figures in every realm of Cuban music including pianists Chucho Valdes, and Frank Emilio and the celebrated nueva trova singer/guitarist Silvio Rodriguez. From his earliest days in New York, Yosvany has been welcomed by the jazz and contemporary music community; playing with Branford Marsalis, Dave Douglas, Steve Coleman, Roy Hargrove, Jeff “Tain” Watts, and Gonzalo Rubalcaba.
Yosvany has continued his music education in New York, he studied composition, orchestration and counterpoint with Leo Edward, Rudolph Palmer. Among the recent commissions he has received as a composer are the Yerba Buena Garden Festival commission for the suite “Noches de Parranda”for 12 piece ensemble with the support of Map Fund, the Harlem Stage commission to write the music for the Opera Makandal which will be presented in 2014.
Yosvany received the Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors/New York State Music Fund’s grant for Yedégbé, a suite of Ararámusic, to be released in a CD in 2014 and was just named a Cintas Fellow for 2013.