The 2013 festival line-up
Still a work in progress, and subject to change....check back for more to come!
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Tail Dragger
"One day this boy will take my place." - Howlin' Wolf. James Yancy Jones aka Tail Draggerhad been called "Crawlin‚ James" as, ever the extravagant showman, he would crawl on the floor like the Wolf did. By the early seventies, Tail Dragger was performing under his own name six nights a week on the West Side of Chicago, and would feature blues heavyweights in his band such as Eddie Taylor, Hubert Sumlin, Johnny Littlejohn, Carey Bell, and Big Leon Brooks. By the early to mid eighties he was traveling to Europe often to be featured with Vienna's Mojo Blues Band. He also recorded a single for Jimmy Dawkins' Leric Music label and was featured on "Chicago Blues Party," released on Austria's Wolf records. In 1996, Tail Dragger recorded his first full length CD under his own name, "Crawlin Kingsnake" for St. George records. He returned to Europe after a long absence to steal the show at the 1997 Utrecht Blues Festival. Tail Dragger toured Europe again in 1999 with the Rockin Johnny Band, and they also tore up the 2001 San Francisco Blues Festival. Bob Corritore Bob Corritore is one of the most active and highly regarded blues harmonica players on the scene today. His style passionately carries forward the old school of playing that Corritore learned as a young man directly from many of original pioneers of Chicago Blues. Born on September 27, 1956 in Chicago, Bob first heard Muddy Waters on the radio at age 12, an event which changed his life forever. Within a year, he was playing harmonica and collecting blues albums. He would cut his teeth sitting in with John Henry Davis on Maxwell Street until he was old enough to sneak into blues clubs. His sympathetic, yet fiery harmonica playing is featured on over 50 releases to date. Many of Bob's acclaimed releases have been nominated or winners for various Handy, Grammy, and Blues Music Awards and Blues Blast Music Awards. Bob is also widely recognized for his many roles in the blues, as band leader, club owner, record producer, radio show host, arts foundation founder, and occasional writer. In 2011 he was nominanted for a BMA (Blues Music Award) and a Living Blues Award for best harmonica player and his CD Bob Corritore & Friends / Harmonica Blues won a BMA for Best Historical Blues Release. Tail Dragger & Bob Corritore Tail Dragger and Bob Corritore first met on January 11, 1976 at the 1815 Club on Chicago's West Side where they performed at a tribute to Howlin' Wolf who had died the day before. This was the symbolic beginning of a lifetime friendship and musical collaboration which led to the critically acclaimed CD „Longtime Friends in the Blues“ published on March 20, 2012 by Delta Groove records. "One of the great personalities of Chicago blues is the unstoppable Tail Dragger, whose charisma fills up any room he plays in." Bob Corritore The Boquete Jazz&Blues Festival Foundation is very happy being able to present these great artists in Panama for the first time at the Boquete Jazz&Blues Festival 2013. They will b e backed up by Boquete's own Boquete Blues Band B3. |
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Carlos Ubarte is one of Panama’s most sought after saxophonists, whose achievements include a Bachelor and Master’s degrees in Music along with several recording projects, Carlos Ubarte has shared the stage with Basilio, Danny Rivera, Ismael Rivera Jr, Luigi Texidor, Viti Ruíz, Charlie Zaa, Raúl Marrero, Tito Allen, Sara Knapp, Cyntia Brown Franklin, Víctor “Vitín” Paz, Pedro Suarez Vértiz, El Rooky, Rubén Blades, Salsa Kids, Carlos Garnett, Danilo Pérez, Carlos El Grande, Charlie Cardona, Pedro Arroyo, Wichie Camacho, Charlie Sepúlveda, Mauricio Silva, Lalo Rodríguez, Gilberto Santa Rosa, among others.
Always loved by Boquete Jazz aficionados Carlos has performed at the Boquete Jazz Festival in February 2011 as well at the Boquete Jazz&Blues Festival 2012. We are happy to have him back in Boquete again for the 2013 festival! |
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Randy Oxford band
Randy Oxford - trombonist, "Blues Performer of the Year," and notorious wild man- has been honored more than 25 times since returning to his home state of Washington more than 20 years ago, following a European Tour of duty with the U.S. Army band. He has won multiple "Best Horn" awards, "Entertainer of the Year," "Keeping the Blues Alive," and induction into the Washington Blues Society's Hall of Fame. His own band: the Randy Oxford Band- has been tapped three times by NW blues associations to compete at the International Blues Challenge in Memphis. Randy's success at the IBC, plus his growing reputation as a jam host on the Legendary Blues Cruises, has resulted in many high-profile festivals and shows, including Le Festival International de Tremblant du Blues (Montreal,Quebec), Portland Waterfront Festival, (Portland,OR), Magic City Music Festival (Billings, MT), Kalamazoo Blues Festival (Kalamazoo, MI), and many other shows around North America. Randy plays the trombone as a lead instrument, inventing a path through the chord progressions, sometimes mimicking the guitars around him, sometimes taking them with him on one of his wild rides. His tone has been admired by symphony conductors, but he also knows how to rip a sound or turn it into an animal call. His show at the Boquete Jazz&Blues Festival will be his first ever appearance in Central America, and we're certain that Boquete is in for a real treat! |
Photo by Mark Heyer
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The Rigoberto Coba Big Band
Rigoberto Coba is a native of David, the capital city of the Panamanian province of Chiriqui located just 38km away from Boquete. Being a professor of music at a David university he is working with various musical formations featuring various musical styles from jazz to salsa, bossa nova and merengue. His show with a 18 piece Big Band that he had specially put together for the 2012 Boquete Jazz&Blues Festival (it was their first-ever public show!) earned so much praise and applause that we just had to invite him back for 2013. We're happy to support great local musical talents by giving them exposure to national and international audiences! |
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Ron Hacker & The Hacksaws
"The first time I got the blues, I mean really got the blues, was in 1956. A friend and I got caught breaking into parking meters. I was eleven - he was twelve. Off we went to the juvenile center. The counselors in the center were young Afro-Americans in their twenties and they loved their music, like young dudes do. In '56 their music was Elmore James, Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, B.B. King, Jimmy Reed. I fell in love with the music and it's been a part of my life since then. As I've gotten older I've tried to concentrate more on playing the Blues than living them." After teaching himself to play guitar, Ron met the late Yank Rachell, partner of Sleepy John Estes. Yank trained Ron on the finer points of Delta Blues, and they became life-long friends in the process. The actor Peter Coyote helped Ron get his first gig in San Francisco at a neighborhood coffee shop. It wasn't long before Ron put together the Hacksaws and was tearing it up in clubs all over the San Francisco Bay Area. Since then, Ron has played every major festival in Northern California, including the Monterey Jazz Festival, the San Francisco Blues Festival, the Marin County Blues Festival and the Long Beach Blues Festival. Ron has also toured extensively in Europe playing major festivals in Belgium, Denmark, France, Holland, Germany, and Norway. Ron has put out ten, and albums, which include No Pretty Songs, Bar Stool Blues, I Got Tattooed, Backdoor Man, Burnin’, Live In Holland, Mr. Bad Boy, My Songs, Filthy Animal, and his highly appraised newest release Live in San Francisco. In March 2012 Ron played a solo show at the Boquete Jazz&Blues Festival, his first-ever show in Central America. Boquete's blues fans loved him, and he loved Boquete. For our 2013 festival he'll be back with his trio The Hacksaws, and we're certain the Boquete crowd will love them even more! |
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Spicy Latin Jazzband
Spicy Latin Jazz is an apt name for this band hailing from Panama City, Panama. Playing a very danceable style of Jazz spiced with intricate Latin rhythms they know how to please their audiences. Bandleader Arturo Villareal and his band have played the Boquete Jazz festival before and always got rave reviews, so we're happy to have them back in the highlands once again.
(photo by Michael Moore) |
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The Boquete Blues Band (B3) and Yella
Boquete's one and only own Blues Band did a great job backing up Mitch Woods and Johnny Sansone at our 2012 festival, and they are going to back up Bob Corritore and Taildragger in 2013 beside playing their own show, too. Since it is one of the objectives of BJBF to also offer exposure to local talents we thought it's about time to let these hard-working guys have their own show at our festival.....Boquete loves them, and our international visitors will love them, too! For their show at the festival they teamed up with singer Yella Werder who is well known and loved by the Boquete community for her numerous performances around town. |
Photo by Jeremy Loscher
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Venezuelan Jazzdiva Maria Rivas & her Libertango band
Jazz-lovers, you're in for a real treat with Maria Rivas and her band!
María represents the color of a unique musical movement due to the richness of its rhythms and message that she has taken to countries like Colombia, Brazil, Santo Domingo, Bolivia, Puerto Rico, and presented her show called “Venezuela, Races Braids” in Austria and Portugal. Her expression, dynamism, refinement and spontaneity to interpret in Spanish, English, French, Italian and Portuguese made her to be recognized as one of the most versatile voices in Latin America, according to the Venezuelan maestro and composer Aldemaro Romero. Her personal struggle through her songs for the protection of Environment, made her gain recognition as an ecologist and leader worthy of the coveted First Prize of her career, the William H. Phelps Award, in defense of the Environment in her native Venezuela. Since 1990, María has recorded a total of 8 albums. Her first one, titled “Primogénito”, made her first hit on her musical career with "El Motorizado". Her second album “Manduco” produced in 1992 included hit single of the same name "Manduco”, which success changed definitely María’s career forever. “Manduco”, a rhythmic and contagious song that fuses the rich flavor of the American coast, hit the Number 1 spot on the "Billboard" Venezuelan charts and stayed strong on the Top 10 for almost a year, achieving an artistic consolidation that has prevailed in Venezuela, Colombia, Panama and Brazil where she’s known as the "Manduco” phenomenon. We are certain that her show will be one of the absolute highlights of the 2013 Boquete Jaz&Blues Festival! |
