UCLA Jazz Combos and Ensembles Concert 1

Charley Harrison, composer, arranger, orchestrator, conductor, and guitarist, has been the Director of the UCLA Jazz Orchestra since 2004. He also became the Inaugural Conductor and Artistic Director of the Hollywood Jazz Orchestra in 2023.

His compositions and arrangements have been performed by some of the biggest names in jazz including: Kenny Burrell, Clark Terry, Marcus Miller, Freddy Cole, Kurt Elling, Cedar Walton, Joe Williams, The Count Basie Orchestra, and The Audio Network. Harrison’s 2006 CD, Keeping My Composure, received critical acclaim, and appeared on the JazzWeek radio charts for 13 consecutive weeks. Charley has previously served as conductor of the Los Angeles Jazz Orchestra, as well as Associated Artistic Director of the Chicago Jazz Orchestra.

Prior to joining the UCLA Faculty, Harrison worked as a composer and orchestrator on several film projects after spending 10 years working as a composer/producer in Chicago’s advertising community, where he created music for such clients as McDonald’s and The Chicago White Sox.

M.M., Composition, Northwestern University; B.M., Arranging and Orchestration, Northwestern University; Berklee College of Music

Steven Loza is a professor of ethnomusicology at UCLA, where he has been on the faculty for thirty-four years, and also served as professor of music at the University of New Mexico, where he formerly directed the Arts of the Americas Institute. He has served as chair of the Department of Ethnomusicology and is currently chair of the Global Jazz Studies Interdepartmental Program, in addition to serving as director of the UCLA Center for Latino Arts. He has conducted extensive research in Mexico, the Chicano/Latino U.S., Cuba, among other areas, and has lectured and read papers throughout the Americas, Europe, and Asia. He has been the recipient of Fulbright and Ford Foundation grants among numerous others, and served on the national screening and voting committees of the Grammy Awards for many years. Aside from UCLA and the University of New Mexico, he has taught at the University of Chile, Kanda University of International Studies in Japan, and the Centro Nacional de las Artes in Mexico City.

Loza’s publications include four books, Barrio Rhythm: Mexican American Music in Los Angeles (1993) and Tito Puente and the Making of Latin Music (1999), both published by the University of Illinois Press, The Jazz Pilgrimage of Gerald Wilson (2018, University of Mississippi Press), and Barrio Harmonics: Essays on Chicano/Latino Music (in press, UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center Publications). Loza has published numerous research journal articles and edited four book anthologies, Musical Aesthetics and Multiculturalism in Los Angeles (UCLA Ethnomusicology Publications, 1994), Musical Cultures of Latin America: Global Effects, Past and Present (UCLA Ethnomusicology Publications, 2003), Musicología global: pensamientos clasicos y contemporaneos sobre la etnomusicología (CENIDIM/CONACULTA, Mexico, 2017), and Religion as Art: Guadalupe, Orishas, Sufi (University of New Mexico Press, 2009).

Loza has performed a great amount of jazz and Latin jazz, has recorded three CDs on the Merrimack label, and has produced numerous concerts and arts festivals internationally, including his role as director of the UCLA Mexican Arts Series from 1986-96 and co-director of the three time Festival de Músicas del Mundo in Mexico City. In 2008 he produced a concert at Disney Hall in Los Angeles featuring the Mexico City Philharmonic Orchestra that included the world premiere of his tone poem America Tropical, a multimedia symphonic piece based on the mural by David Alfaro Siqueiros. Loza directed a tour and cultural interchange featuring Mariachi Los Camperos de Nati Cano performing with the National Symphony Orchestra of Cuba at Casa de las Americas in Havana in 2016, and has developed various recent UCLA projects with Cuba. Recently. he has been collaborating with musicians representing various world music traditions interpreting and experimenting with improvisation in live and recorded performances.

Music of Latin America, Mexico, Cuba; Chicano/Latino music in the U.S.; religion as art; mestizaje; identity and marginality; cross-cultural aesthetics; ethnomusicological history and critique.

Ph.D. Music, UCLA; M.A. Latin American Studies, UCLA; B.A. Music, Cal Poly Pomona

Pianist, composer, and educator, Arturo O’Farrill was born in Mexico and grew up in New York City. Arturo’s professional career began with the Carla Bley Band and continued as a solo performer with a wide spectrum of artists including Dizzy Gillespie, Lester Bowie, Wynton Marsalis, and Harry Belafonte.

In 2007, he founded the Afro Latin Jazz Alliance as a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the performance, education, and preservation of Afro Latin music.

An avid supporter of all the arts, Arturo has performed with Ballet Hispanico, Ron Brown’s EVIDENCE Dance company, and the Malpaso Dance Company, for whom he has written several ballets.

Arturo’s well-reviewed and highly praised “Afro-Latin Jazz Suite” from the album CUBA: The Conversation Continues (Motéma) took the 2016 Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Composition as well as the 2016 Latin Grammy for Best Latin Jazz Recording. In addition, his composition “Three Revolutions” from the album Familia-Tribute to Chico and Bebo also received the Best Instrumental Composition Grammy in 2018. Arturo’s album, “Fandango at the Wall in New York” won yet another Grammy award in 2023.

Arturo has been a Steinway Artist for many years and is a Blue Note Records Recording Artist.