In a one-off Festival performance, Grammy Award-winning conguero and bandleader Poncho Sanchez commemorated one of jazz music’s most famous and influential collaborations.

In 1947 bebop jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and the great Cuban drummer Chano Pozo came together to create the transformative recording CubanoBe, Cubano Bop. This revolutionary album almost single-handedly propelled Afro-Cuban sounds into the arena of serious music and instantly ensured the immortality of its creators.

Over 60 years later Poncho Sanchez – one of the top Latin jazz artists of our age – channeled the rhythms and beats of the time in a tribute concert that crackled with all the energy and vibrancy of the original work. In one concert only, Sanchez and his sizzling band re-ignited the classics and set fire to the Town Hall stage with their own raucous Latin-jazz compositions.