“It is both listening material and dancing material,” Spiro said.
The Jacob School of Music’s Latin Jazz Ensemble and the IU Jazz Afro-Cuban combo will perform at 8 p.m. Monday in the Buskirk-Chumley Theater for “A Night of Latin Jazz.” General admission for the concert is free.
Spiro and Wayne Wallace are co-directors of the ensemble.
Both of the groups are part of the music school’s jazz department.
The Latin Jazz Ensemble is a 25-piece big band that performs a mixture of genres such as Latin Jazz, pop and funk.
The show will begin with the IU Jazz Afro-Cuban combo, which is led by Wallace.
The Latin Jazz Ensemble performs about twice a semester, Spiro said, but the concerts are usually at the Musical Arts Center. The new venue allows for the audience to dance, he said.
Spiro, associate professor of percussion in the music school, is a Grammy-nominated percussionist and a recording artist.
He co-leads the percussion trio Talking Drums, and Drum Magazine named his album “Bata-Ketu” one of the top 50 drum records of all time.
Wallace, professor of practice in jazz in the music school, is a trombonist, arranger and composer and a five-time Grammy Award nominee. He has performed, recorded and studied with musicians such as Aretha Franklin, Whitney Houston, Tito Puente, Earth, Wind & Fire, Santana and the Count Basie Orchestra.
The concert’s repertoire will feature both standards and originals.
“Both groups play a variety of styles,” Spiro said.
Spiro said as the students in the ensemble learn many new pieces, and one of the challenges is learning to play the genre of Latin music itself.
First-year master’s student Yael Litwin is a percussionist with the Latin Jazz Ensemble.
The band has come a long way, she said, and playing with the other musicians is an enjoyable experience.
Litwin said she likes playing the music because of its joyous tone.
“It is joy that permeates through all of it, through the rhythm and harmony,” she said.
Litwin said the group has high-quality musicians with great camaraderie. She said Spiro and Wallace are educators with a huge depth of knowledge about music and how to communicate with students.
“They have respect for us as artists and as individuals,” Litwin said. “They also complement each other.”
It can be difficult to get the whole band on the same page, Litwin said, but they always come together. She said the musicians must learn how to play in a way that sounds like Latin jazz.
“We have to make it sound like it is from Cuba, not from Indiana,” Litwin said.
Spiro said he takes great pride in the ensemble.
“I’m looking forward to showing off the group,” Spiro said.
