Jazz Festival 2022-An Evening at The Wharf

2022 marks 31 YEARS of The Institute’s annual jazz festival!

Returning this year to The Wharf, the Institute’s jazz festival continues to spotlight top professional artists each year that light up the outdoor stage with hot summer jazz.

31^st  annual Institute Jazz Festival on August 28 – Jazz at the Wharf, featuring 7-time Grammy award winner, Afro Latin Jazz master Arturo O’Farrill

The concert is offered free to the public. Rain location is Waynesboro Area Middle School.

This year’s concert will feature the Arturo O’Farrill Afro Latin Jazz Quintet, featuring Arturo O’Farrill (piano), Adam O’Farrill (trumpet), Zack O’Farrill (drums), Liany Mateo (bass), and Carlos “Carly” Maldonado (percussion).

Pianist, composer, and educator Arturo O’Farrill is the winner of seven Grammy awards with multiple other nominations. Born in Mexico, O’Farrill grew up in New York City, and began his professional career with the Carla Bley Band, Dizzy Gillespie, Lester Bowie, Wynton Marsalis, Harry Belafonte (where he served a music director), and Jerry Gonzalez and the Fort Apache Band. 

In 2007, he founded the Afro Latin Jazz Alliance as a not-for-profit educational organization dedicated to the performance and preservation of Afro Latin music. In December 2010 he traveled with the original Chico O’Farrill Afro Cuban Jazz Orchestra to Cuba, returning his father’s musicians to his homeland. He continues to travel to Cuba regularly as an informal cultural ambassador, working with Cuban musicians, dancers and students, bringing local musicians from Cuba to the U.S. and American musicians to Cuba. 

O’Farrill’s renowned Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra (which plays weekly at Birdland in NYC) and his Afro Latin Quintet have performed at jazz festivals and clubs around the world. O’Farrill has also written ballets and performed with Ballet Hispanico, the Malpaso Dance Company, and the Alvin Ailey Dance Company. 

As a composer he received commissions from Meet the Composer, Jazz at Lincoln Center, The Philadelphia Music Project, The Apollo Theater, Symphony Space, the Bronx Museum of the Arts, the Young Peoples Chorus of New York, Columbia University and the New York State Council on the Arts. He is professor of Global Jazz Studies and assistant dean for equity, diversity and inclusion at University of California (UCLA), has been honored as a Steinway Artist for many years, and is now a Blue Note Records recording artist.

O’Farrill’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 and the 2016 Latin Grammy award for Best Latin Jazz Album. His powerful “Three Revolutions” from the album Familia: Tribute to Chico and Bebo, was the 2018 Grammy award (his sixth) winner for Best Instrumental Composition. His album Four Questions (ZOHO) is the first to embody all original compositions, including the title track, which features the brilliant orator Dr. Cornel West. This album won a Grammy in 2021.

View biographies of all the musicians here.

To add to the celebration this year, the Pretzel Spot Café food truck will be on site and BYOB will be permitted.

See a history of The Institute’s Jazz Festival here, with a list of all performers from 1992 through 2022.

Support for this event was provided by premiere sponsor, FirstEnergy Foundation and a grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency. Further sponsors include The Hamilton Family Foundation on behalf of Hamilton Nissan; Beverly McFarland, in memory of Tom McFarland; Andrew and Sally Sussman; and the Franklin County Visitors Bureau. Additional support by The Institute’s Today’s Horizon Fund contributors: The Nora Roberts Foundation; the John R. Hershey Jr. and Anna L. Hershey Family Foundation; APX Enclosures, Inc.; The Carolyn Terry Eddy Family: Carolyn, with daughters Connie Fleagle & Kim Larkin. Facility support provided courtesy of Jeff and Nancy Mace.

Parking is available on the property. Those attending are encouraged to bring lawn chairs and blankets, and picnics are welcome. As in the past, cold water will be available free to all attendees.