CELEBRATE BROOKLYN! @ Prospect Park Bandshell
Bud Light Latin Music Series
A Brooklyn native, Afro-Cuban legend Larry Harlow has performed everywhere from Puerto Rico to Broadway, and has produced over 50 albums including the 1978 Grammy-nominated La Raza Latina, A Salsa Suite. The son of a professional bass player and opera singer, Harlow graduated from the prestigious N.Y. High School of Music and Art, and his teenage exposure to the music and culture within the New York Latino community fascinated him at an early age. Affectionately known as “El Judio Maravilloso,” Harlow developed the explosive, trumpet/trombone sound of contemporary salsa bands in the early 1970s and revolutionized modern salsa as both a musician and producer in his work with the storied Fania label. At Celebrate Brooklyn!, he brings his all-star band to back a violin throwdown of epic dimensions: the great Cuban Alfredo De La Fe vs. Brooklyn’s own Lewis Kahn.
Bronx-based salsa dura band La Excelencia are taking the salsa sound Larry Harlow helped create to new levels, and Latin Beat Magazine describes them aptly as, “young, raw, raging musical weapons of mass destruction.” Following the 2006 release of their first album Salsa Con Consciencia, the big band toured internationally and followed with the release of Mi Tumbao Social. In 2009, La Excelencia represented the “New Generation of Salsa Dura” at the Barbican in London. The concert sold out and was broadcast live on the BBC, helping La Excelencia garner a loyal fan base within the hardcore salsa music community worldwide.
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