Dafnis Prieto,
director and composerGRAMMY-winning drummer and composer Dafnis Prieto blends his Cuban heritage with a forward-looking musical vision. A master storyteller and MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship recipient, Prieto crafts musical narratives through beautiful melodies and powerful rhythms.
The program featured new composition alongside selections from his GRAMMY-winning album, Back to the Sunset.
ABOUT DAFNIS PRIETO
“[Prieto's music is] a marvel of acrobatic musicianship”— The New York Times
“That’s the magic of [Dafnis] Prieto: He has the ability to offer compositions and arrangements that are distinctly him”— DownBeat
“one of the most multidimensional artists working today"— JazzTimes
From Cuba, Dafnis Prieto’s revolutionary drumming techniques and compositions have had a powerful impact on the music landscape, nationally and internationally. His various awards and honors include a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, a GRAMMY Award for Back to the Sunset (2018), two additional GRAMMY nominations, two Latin GRAMMY nominations (including Best New Artist in 2007), and the Jazz Journalists Association’s Up & Coming Musician of the Year in 2006.
As a composer, Prieto has created music for dance, film, chamber ensembles, and most notably for his own bands, ranging from duets to big bands, including the different groups featured in his ten distinctive recordings as a leader: About The Monks, Absolute Quintet, Taking the Soul for a Walk, Si o Si Quartet: Live at Jazz Standard NYC, Dafnis Prieto Proverb Trio, Triangles and Circles, Back to the Sunset, Transparency, Cantar, and 3 Sides of the Coin.
In 2022, Prieto premiered a new work for Latin band and string orchestra — Tentación — performed by People of Earth with the Louisville Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, New World Symphony, and Britt Festival Orchestra. He has received commissions, grants, and fellowships from Chamber Music America, Princeton University, Jazz at Lincoln Center, MoMA, Whitney Museum of American Art, National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures, Jerome Foundation, East Carolina University, Painted Bride Art Center, Meet The Composer, WNYC, New Music USA, Hazard Productions, and Metropole Orkest, among others.
Prieto has performed at many national and international music festivals as a bandleader. Since his 1999 arrival in New York, he has also worked in bands led by Michel Camilo, Chucho and Bebo Valdés, Henry Threadgill, Steve Coleman, Eddie Palmieri, Chico and Arturo O’Farrill, Dave Samuels and the Caribbean Jazz Project, Jane Bunnett, D.D. Jackson, Edward Simon, Roy Hargrove, Don Byron, and Andrew Hill, among others.
Also a gifted educator, Prieto has conducted numerous master classes, clinics, and workshops around the world. He was on the jazz studies faculty at New York University from 2005 to 2014, and in 2015 joined the faculty of the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music, where he directs the esteemed Frost Latin Jazz Orchestra.
In 2016, Prieto published the groundbreaking analytical and instructional drum book, A World of Rhythmic Possibilities. In 2020, he published Rhythmic Synchronicity, a book for non-drummers inspired by a course of the same name that Prieto developed at the Frost School of Music. He is the founder of the independent music company Dafnison Music, established in 2008.
