Jazz Legends Billy Childs & Paquito D’Rivera: For the First Time Ever

What happens when you mix an eminent American jazz and classical pianist/composer with a Cuban Latin-jazz icon who has also become a celebrated classical music composer? You get musical fireworks as two jazz masters with a collective eighteen Grammys unite for the first time in a one-of-a-kind public performance. With cellist Mark Summers of the Grammy-winning Turtle Island String Quartet.

Billy Childs is one of the foremost American composers of his era and his music encompasses jazz, classical, and popular music influences. His recordings have earned him two Grammy awards and five nominations, and a parallel niche as an in-demand performer and composer. Childs has performed with Yo-Yo Ma, Sting, Renee Fleming, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Chick Corea, Wynton Marsalis, and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra.

Winner of fourteen Grammy Awards, Paquito D’Rivera is celebrated both for his artistry in Latin jazz and his achievements as a classical composer. He is the recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters Award and the National Medal of the Arts, as well as the Living Jazz Legend Award from the Kennedy Center. The NEA affirms “he has become the consummate multinational ambassador, creating and promoting a cross-culture of music that moves effortlessly among jazz, Latin, and Mozart.”