Arturo O'Farrill and the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra to release new album, Mundoagua: Celebrating Carla Bley, out February 7, 2025 on ZOHO Music

Pianist, composer, and bandleader Arturo O'Farrill and the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra (ALJO) announce their next album Mundoagua: Celebrating Carla Bley, out on February 7, 2025, on the Zoho label. The album, recorded in tribute to the late Bley, will feature Blue Palestine (2018), the composer's final work commissioned for O'Farrill and the ALJO prior to her passing in 2023.

O'Farrill was nineteen years old when he was discovered by Bley, who immediately hired him to perform as part of her big band, where he remained a firm fixture from 1979-1983. "Carla Bley is iconic. Truly one of the greats," said O'Farrill. "Her name should be used with the same reverence and deference we use when we speak of Duke Ellington, Aaron Copland, Gil Evans, Charles Mingus and even Chico O’Farrill. Carla was my North Star. She showed me the three most important ingredients a composer can have: curiosity, integrity and accuracy. The curiosity to follow one’s muse no matter where it leads. The integrity to execute based on that curiosity, and the accuracy to execute that vision with command of your skill set no matter how prodigious or rudimentary it is."

The album will also include two O'Farrill original compositions: Mundoagua (pronounced moon-dwa-gua), commissioned by the Columbia School of Music to commemorate the Year of Water, and Día de Los Muertos, which was inspired by a book on the Aztec people.

On December 14, 2024, O’Farrill and the ALJO will perform selections from the album alongside several compositions by Carla Bley with special guests saxophonist Joe Lovano, who himself has appeared with the Carla Bley Big Band, and vibraphonist Patricia Brennan, presented by Brooklyn's St. Ann's Warehouse in collaboration with Belongó (formerly the Afro Latin Jazz Alliance). O'Farrill's St. Ann's Warehouse performance is one of several concerts celebrating Carla Bley this season; throughout the academic year, he will lead The New School's Carla Bley Ensemble, culminating in the US premiere of Bley's prolific Escalator Over the Hill on May 2, 2025.

Learn more about the album at the ZOHO label's website.