Omara Portuondo performs Friday, Nov. 5, 8 p.m. at UNC’s Memorial Hall. Tickets are $10-$55. Read more of Sylvia Pfeiffenberger’s interview with Omara Portuondo at her blog, Onda Carolina. When song stylist Omara Portuondo makes a stop at Memorial Hall Friday during her triumphant tour behind the album Gracias, she’ll finally break the Triangle’s Cuban […]
Sylvia Pfeiffenberger
Bio: Sylvia Pfeiffenberger lives in Durham and hosts a weekly Latin music show on WXDU.
Posted inMusic
The ironies and energy of La Excelencia’s hard salsa
When hardcore salsa fans hear the young New York band La Excelencia for the first time, they’ll almost certainly be reminded of the classic acts of the ’60s and ’70s: Willie Colon, Dimension Latina, El Gran Combo. Fast, roughneck and in your face, La Excelencia’s studio albums are driven by the same urgent brass, fierce […]
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Pavelid Castaneda Florez
Watch video of Pavelid on YouTube • two-minute traditional tune • sharping lever demo (part I and part II) • four-minute salsa tune For Pavelid and Edmar Castaneda, father and son harpists from Bogotá, Colombia, overcoming obstacles with the harp has been a family tradition. This Sunday, Edmar, a rising international jazz artist, will join […]
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Jazz finally taps into plena, one of Puerto Rico’s overlooked rhythms
In Santurce, a poor suburb outside San Juan, Puerto Rico, there’s a bus that doesn’t run anymore, but the stops it once madeparadasstill lend their names to the densely populated neighborhoods. Ask where something is, and you’re more likely to be told the name of a parada than a street. Tourists beware, though: Paradas only […]
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Arturo Sandoval and a Sin Miedo after-party
“This instrument is pain,” said Cuban-born trumpeter Arturo Sandoval from the stage of the Jefferson Center in Roanoke last month. Complaining that every inch of his body hurt to hit the extreme high and low notes for which he is renowned, the founding member of Cuba’s legendary Latin fusion group Irakere told us something else […]
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Live: Toby Love’s short, spicy set
Toby Love/ Girlz Talk Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh Sunday, Feb. 22 Bronx bling met Dominican swagger Sunday night at the Lincoln Theatre, where ‘crunckchata” chanteur Toby Love and his protegés, Girlz Talk, played to a house of about 50. Love, neé Octavio Rivera Jr, is Puerto Rican, ‘but I have Dominican family,” he says. A former […]
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Live: The charming Los Tigres del Norte
‘They’re like the Mexican Beatles,” says Edgar Ramírez, waving a tri-color bandana and sporting a heavy, black felt cowboy hat covered with the signatures of Los Tigres del Norte in calligraphic, silver Sharpie ink. Outside of Disco Rodeo, fans endure freezing temperatures to pay $60 to see these Godfathers of Norteño, but Ramirez won free […]
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Bare Theatre’s The Tempest
The Tempest Bare Theatre Closed Feb. 15 @ Common Ground Theatre Feb. 21-22 @ Holly Springs Cultural Arts Center Director Carmen-maria Mandley promises that her Bare Theatre take on The Tempest will be a “wild ride,” awash in music and words, as actors “attack” Shakespeare’s text “with whole body.” Heather Hackford certainly makes good on […]
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STOMP is entertaining, but predictable
STOMP Memorial Auditorium Through Feb. 15 www.broadwayseriessouth.com “Making something out of nothing”: That is the way one audience member described STOMP. In a sequence of scenes without dialogue, the young cast of dancers mimes broad slapstick comedy while making percussion instruments out of everyday objects, from broom handles to match boxes, empty cans and trash […]
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PlayMakers’ marvelous take on Glass Menagerie
The Glass Menagerie PlayMakers Repertory Company Through Feb. 28 “I believe that in great plays, it’s all there for you,” said Libby Appel, director of The Glass Menagerie, in a discussion with audience members after the PlayMakers premiere, about how she mined the Tennessee Williams text for interpretive cues that, together with revelatory acting, set […]