The Edward Simon Group featuring pianist Edward Simon, Reuben Rogers, bass and Adam Cruz, drums, plus special guest, award-winning Mexican vocalist Magos Herrera and percussionist Luis Quintero, present a program entitled “Femeninas,” which celebrates the legacy of Latin American women songwriters including Violeta Parra (Chile), Marta Valdes (Cuba), Chabuca Granda (Peru), Elizabeth Morris (Argentina) and Joyce (Brazil) with a distinct jazz bent. Also included in the program will be Simon’s Chamber Music America commissioned multi-movement work, Latino Soy, which was funded through the generosity of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and premiered at The Bowes Center in San Francisco, California in March 2022.

A native of Venezuela, Edward Simon, has made a name for himself in the U.S. as a jazz improviser, composer-arranger and band leader and in recent years, he has explored the commonalities that jazz has with the folkloric sounds of Latin America. Now based in the Bay Area, he is a member of the all-star SFJAZZ Collective, and has been a Guggenheim Fellow, along with being awarded multiple composition grants as part of the Chamber Music America’s New Jazz Works initiative. Simon has recorded 16 albums with his latest, Solo Live, released in October 2021. His 2016 album, Latin American Songbook, won an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Jazz Album and was described as “brimming with lyricism, color, and groove, giving instrumental voice to songs originally made famous by such singers as Caetano Veloso and Mercedes Sosa.” The Edward Simon Trio has been playing together for fifteen years, performing at some of the top venues and festivals in the country and is hailed as one of today’s top jazz piano trios. The trio’s current focus is on Simon’s compositions and arrangements of Latin American standards. Born in Mexico City and now based in New York, Magos Herrera is a “dazzling jazz singer, songwriter, producer, and educator,” who was declared “one of the greatest contemporary interpreters of song” by The Latin Jazz Network. Best known for her eloquent vocal improvisation and her singular bold style, which embraces elements of contemporary jazz with Ibero-American melodies and rhythms, Herrera sings in Spanish, English, and Portuguese, and has garnered many awards and recognitions, including a Grammy short-list nomination in the Best Jazz Vocal Album category for her album Distancia (2009). The only female artist to have received the Berklee College of Music’s Master of Latin Music Award, she is a champion of women’s causes and a promoter of gender equality, serving as spokesperson for UN Women, and contributing to UNITE to end violence against women. She serves as an artistic advisor of the “National Sawdust,” one of Brooklyn’s most innovative venues, and produces and hosts a weekly radio program from New York for Mexico’s Public Radio. Born in Caracas, Venezuela, percussionist Luis Ernesto Quintero Vegas (who goes by Luis Quintero) hails from a lineage of distinguished musicians and singers. He has participated in over 700 musical productions spanning a wide range of genres and is a multiple Grammy or Latin Grammy Award winner, including with Chick Corea & The Spanish Heart Band for Best Latin Jazz Album (2019) and in with the Spanish Harlem Orchestra for Best Tropical Latin album (2018).