WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Williams College Department of Music presents SYOTOS as part of the Williams Jazz Festival and the Visiting Artist Series. This event, held Thursday at 7:30 p.m. in Goodrich Hall, is free and open to the public.
SYOTOS performs boundary-busting music that gives new meaning to Latin jazz. SYOTOS boasts stars from the ensembles of Tito Puente, Eddie Palmieri, and Ray Barretto. Their music fuses strands of Afro-Cuban, funk, jazz, gospel, and contemporary classical into a swirl of surging rhythm. Bring your dancing shoes to Goodrich Hall.
SYOTOS (See You On The Other Side) was founded in 1992 by trombonist Chris Washburne and features some of the best Latin jazz players on the New York scene. SYOTOS pushes the genre of Latin Jazz into uncharted waters resounding a postmodern mix that embraces dissonance, weaving contemporary uptempo beats with a driving sound. This band embodies Latin jazz with a global reach, combining Afro-Cuban, funk, jazz, and gospel music. The band got its start hosting the longest running weekly (22 years) Latin jazz jam session in New York City’s history. The band’s six recordings Nuyorican Nights, The Other Side, Paradise In Trouble, Land of Nod, Fields of Moons, and Low Ridin have received international acclaim and led to tours in Europe, Asia, Africa, and throughout the U.S.
Led by jazz trombonist Washburne, SYOTOS showcases his many original compositions. Washburne is professor of music and chair of the Music Department at Columbia University and the founder of Columbia’s Louis Armstrong Jazz Performance Program. He has published numerous articles on jazz, Latin jazz, and salsa. His books include “Bad Music: the Music We Love to Hate” (Routledge, 2004), “Sounding Salsa: Performing Latin Music in New York” (Temple University Press, 2008), and “Latin Jazz: the Other Jazz” (Oxford University Press, 2020).
For more information, visit https://music.williams.edu/.
