MUSIC
It was a pleasure coming back to Jazz At Lincoln Center’s beautiful Jazz Club, Dizzy’s Coca Cola, this time playing the amazing Acid Mambo music of Chris Washburne’s Syotos band!
With spellbinding views of Central Park behind the stage, it is one of the most beautiful clubs in the entire world. The sound is impecable… and so is the food!
With a great 4.5 star review, DOWNBEAT has put us among 2016’s best albums….
The newest incarnation of FOREIGN AFFAIR performed to a full house at the iconic JOE’s PUB on Lafayette Street, featuring vibraphonist Bill Ware (STEELY DAN, GROOVE COLLECTIVE), percussionist Rudy Bird (KENNY GARRETT, WEATHER REPORT… MILES DAVIS), percussionist Samuel Torres (LILA DOWNs, RICHARD BONA), up-and-coming percussionist Memo Barros and yours truly at the piano… CD recording coming up!
A beautiful musical exploration happened on Sunday November 17th at George Mason University’s Art Center, a beautiful 1700 seat theater, with the Washington Symphonic Brass in a successful crossover of Classical, Jazz and Pop music… Hector played on his own arrangement of Bach’s F major Prelude (WTK X) in the first half of the concert and on the second part, featuring pop music, all orchestrated by fantastic trumpeter and leader, Phil Snedecor…
FOREIGN AFFAIR conquered new horizons this past November 9th, performing, this time as a Trio, at the First Horsens Latin Jazz Festival in that charming town on the mainland side of Denmark. Being a first time made the festival a beautiful and very intimate affair, making our decision to bring a Trio format the right decision. We had Bass Guitar phenomenon Juan Garcia Herreros and percussion living legend Roberto Quintero on an innovative Drum/Percussion set. Firewroks were flying! The interaction with the audience was excellent and at the end everybody graded the whole 3-day festival a huge success! My congratulations to Maria de la Luz and her partner Tomas for a beautiful project and good luck in the future!
Saturday October 26th, 8PM, Hector will be back at the fabulous SIDE DOOR JAZZ CLUB in Old Lyme, CT with his new project, PAU BRASIL… re-visiting Brazil’s rich musical culture through innovative arrangements of ageless standards and and original compositions.
A fresh line up of well-known personalities of NYC’s amazing Brazilian Jazz scene:
Itaguara Brandao, bass; Ricardo Grilli, guitar; Ze Mauricio, percussion, Sebastian Nickoll, percussion; Hector Martignon, piano/accordion/leader
The Side Door Jazz Club is housed adjacent to the venerable Old Lyme Inn, an exquisite Bed and Breakfast opened in 1956 in a former farm dating from 1856. Across the street is the Old Lyme Art Society, once home of theAmerican Impressionist Movement.
Come… enjoy art, history, geography, haute cuisine and support world-class live Jazz while checking out this beautiful new venue for Jazz in the North East!
Ti Kanis? Orea!!
Greece is coming back! And we’ll be there…
Starting the late Summer/Fall schedule will be a series of performances and workshops at the First KOZANI JAZZ FESTIVAL, from September 4-7 in Kozani, Greece, a dream-like town not far from Thessaloniki. Thereafter, we will close our Greek Odissey with a night at the Tiki Club in Athens on September 8th. The Foreign Affair quartet will feature such amazing instrumentalists as Panagiotis Andreu on bass, Mauricio Herrera on drums/percussion, long time member Christos Rafalides on vibes (and yours truely on piano). We will be playing new music ready to be recorded soon, adding this time the unparalleled artistry of Greek bass-virtuoso Panagiotis Andreu and, from the other side of the world, Cuba, an inventive new rhythm set-up by Mauricio Herrera. See you in Greece…
Kalimera!!
This Friday July 19th and Saturday 20th, Foreign Affair Quartet will be performing at Connecticut’s newest and hippest Jazz venue, the Side Door Jazz Club, 85 Lyme Str, in the town of Old Lyme, CT starting at 8:30PM, After a successful 7-concert Japan stint and several week-long engagements at Dizzy’s Jazz Club, the Grammy-nominated (2008 and 2010 for Best Latin Jazz Album) band features a renewed all-star constellation of virtuoso instrumentalists of world-renown: Christos Rafalides (vibes), John Benitez (bass), Samuel Torres (percussion) and Hector Martignon (piano/accordion/leader) and will perform a brand new, recording-ripe repertoire of the unique brand of Latin, Brazilian and World-Jazz that has distinguished this band for 15 years, as well as some of their vintage compositions.
The Side Door Jazz Club is housed adjacent to the venerable Old Lyme Inn, an exquisite Bed and Breakfast opened in 1956 in a former farm dating from 1856. Across the street is the Old Lyme Art Society, once home of the American Impressionist Movement.
Come… enjoy art, history, geography, haute cuisine and support world-class live Jazz while checking out this beautiful new venue for Jazz in the North East!
I am extremely excited to return to beautiful Tokyo in the middle of the Cherry Blossom Festivities… My quartet, Foreign Affair, featuring Samuel Torres (perc), Christos Rafalides (vibes) and Armando Gola (bass) will be playing 5 gigs in 4 venues around Tokyo, including the famous Mandala (April 2, 3), R2 Ropongi (April 5), Shibuya O-nest (April 6) and Tokyo Main Dining (April 7). Before that I’ll be conducting a workshop with Tokyo University Big Band with concerts on March 30, 31. If you are in Tokyo…
As part of an already established tradition, every November Hector Martignon offers an exclusive musical evening at the beautiful Centre Robert Dunand, of the Conservatoire Populaire de Genève (Geneva, Switzerland). This year he will perform on Sunday, November 25th, 5PM, with two world-renowned virtuoso instrumentalists, Venezuelan multi-percussionist Roberto Quintero and Vienna-based Colombian Bass-wizard Juan García Herreros. For tickets and more details check http://www.amiando.com/HectorMartignon2012.html .
Hector Martignon 
