I.  San Francisco and Santa Cruz:   


Omar Sosa   will have a 4-night residency with different guests on different nights at SF Jazz Thursday-Sunday, April 20-23. His Cuarteto AfroCubano, John Santos, percussionist Mino Cinelu , who started his career with Miles Davis, GRAMMY® -winning trumpter Joo Kraus and Yosvany Terry are among the guests during the residency, and the final night includes Indian percussionist Trilok Gurtu and Italian trumpeter Paolo Fresu. The trio has played extensively in Europe, but this concert is their debut in North America. 
Omar will also be at Kuumbwa in Santa Cruz  with Gurtu and Fresu on Monday, April 24. 
For more details about the San Francisco concerts, click here.  
For more details about the Kuumbwa concerts, click here.  

Also in Santa Cruz, Juan De Marcos & The Afro Cuban All-Stars will be at Kuumbwa on Monday, April 17.   Full details here.  
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And in Chicago......
1.  Movie Night! 

Ya no es antes, a feature film by Lester Hamlet , in addition to having already won some awards as a film, features a soundtrack with music by Harold López-Nussa , Kelvis Ochoa and Haila .  At the AMC River East 21  Friday April 21- Sunday 23. The director, Lester Hamlet, who already has an impressive body of other work, will be present for all three screenings.Complete details here . 

2.  Septeto Nacional Ignacio Piñeiro concerts 

Two of them coming up on May 1 and 2 - full details at Hothouse.net

3. Roberto Fonseca in a television program taping with a live audience at WTTW Friday, May 5 

Live taping of The Experience features an interview with Roberto followed by a performance and an autograph session.  Full details here . 

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ENGLISH:   From my point of view, the International Symposium held by CIDMUC (the Center for the Research and Development of Cuban Music) which takes place in Havana May 16-18 this year,   is one of the most interesting things about Cubadisco - lectures, debates, demonstrations of instruments etc.   However, it is also held entirely in Spanish, and it is often at a high technical level, so if you are not hispanohablante,  check out the multiple other wonderful things on this website.  My observation (I have attended before) is that those who attend the symposium without knowing the language find themselves  lost very quickly.  However,   if you do undertand Spanish, more details are available in the Spanish version of the post below. 
ESPAÑOL :  Desde mi punto de vista, el Simposio Internacional organizado por CIDMUC (el Centro de Investigación y Desarrollo de la Música Cubana), que tendrá lugar del 16 al 18 de Mayo de 2017, es uno de los eventos más interesantes durante la Feria Internacional Cubadisco. Puede leer los detalles aquí.........

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Harold López-Nussa ,   part of the formidable López-Nussa family of Jazz greats, is now on tour in the US with his trio, which includes his brother Ruy Adrian López-Nussa on drumes and Alune Wade on bass.        Dates are as follows: 

October 4:   Gateway City Arts, Holyoke, MA
October 5:  Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA
October 6-7:  Ramapo College, Mahwah, NJ
October 8: Kennedy Center Jazz Club, Washington, DC
October 11: Dizzy's Club Coca Cola, NYC, NY
October 13:  The Side Door, Old Lyme, CT
October 14:  Bric Festival, Brooklyn, NY
October 15:  Chris Jazz Café, Philadelphia, PA
October 16: Yocum Institute of Arts, Wyomissing, PA
October 18:  Dakota, Minneapolis, MN
October 19: SPACE, Evanston, IL
October 20: Conservatory of Music, Milwaukee, WI
October 21-22: Dirty Dog, Detroit, MI
October 23: Baur's, Denver, CO
October 27: Blue Whale, Los Angeles, CA
October 28:  Chickie Wah Wah, New Orleans, LA 

You can click through to more details on the Harold López-Nussa website .  There is a new CD out, El Viaje , which we will eventually review. 
Hopefully  someone will eventually bring his uncle Ernán and his father Ruy up here the same way,   In the meantime, if you are serious about Jazz, take the time to check this out.  You'll be glad that you did.

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After 24 years of operation, Descarga.com has ceased operations and posted a farewell message on their website.  For many years, especially their early years, they were the most important source of hardcopy CDs of Cuban music in the United States, but they were much more than that - album reviews, articles, in the early years they even had a wonderful newsletter until it eventually went the way of most newsletters in this industry as people began reading less and watching video more.  I was a customer myself for many years (admittedly less so in recent times, but that had more to do with my own circumstances than with theirs). In the 90s, they were even written up in some articles about e-commerce as being in the vanguard of Internet businesses.  

They weren't done in by a competitor doing the same things that they did, but rather by the changing patterns of how many people now consume music (including, unfortunately, the free file-sharing which is gradually destroying the chances for physical recordings to be sold effectively in the marketplace anywhere other than concerts and impairing digital sales in our genres as well). 

Congratulations to Bruce Pollin and the Descarga operation for many years of excellence. This is a sad day for the Tropical Latin music industry and for Latin Jazz as well. 

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