Justo almario biography of michael

Marina Albero was born in Barcelona, Spain, and started playing music on stages as a child with her family while they toured all around the world performing iberian and early music, always creating new shows. In her early years she studied in Barcelona’s Conservatory (El Bruc) and later in La Havana (ISA), where she finished her classical piano studies with the great professor and pianist Mrs. Teresa Junco.

Marina has been researching many different music styles such as: jazz, flamenco, early music, andalusie, classical indian, latin (son & latin jazz)… She loves composing and improvising with a wide personal language carved by her colorful background.

She has played and recorded with several well known musicians and bands including L’Arpeggiata, Chano Dominguez, Bori Albero, Pepe Habichuela, La Folata, Mariona Sagarra, Barbarito Torres, Llibert Fortuny, Glen Velez, Silvio Rodriguez, Carlos Saura and Ars Longa.
Since September 2014, she enjoys living in Seattle with her musical family and has added to the local music scene and been well received by her fellow musicians as well as the listeners and the media.

Since then, Marina has been piano chair at Teatro Zinzanni and has been invited to present her music at the Ballard Jazz Festival, Earshot Jazz Festival, Marymoor Live, KNKX live studios and Jazz Northwest. The Marina Albero Project (since 2016) features some of the finest musicians like Hans Teuber, Evan Flory-Barnes, D’Vonne Lewis, Jeff Busch, Jeff Johnson, Ganesh Rajagopalan, among others. In 2018, she was awarded with the Golden Ear Award for Emergent Artist and in 2019 she was the recipient of two Golden Ear Awards: best instrumentalist and best record of the year (self release: “A life Soundtrack”).

On March 8th 2020, she started the emergency musical project “The Quarantine Sessions” as a response to all the cancellations due to the COVID19 outbreak. It is drawing lots of interest from the press and  part

Justo Almario and his longtime friend Abraham Laboriel are two of the world’s acclaimed jazz musicians. They move easily from laying down tracks in slick L.A. studios for cds by such megastars as Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder to playing in their individual churches’ worship bands.

Laboriel, called “L.A.’s ace groovemonger” by Bass Player magazine, toured with vibraphone player Gary Burton, pop singer Johnny Mathis, and jazz arranger Henry Mancini before moving to Los Angeles and becoming, in the words of one magazine, “the most widely used session bass player of our time.” He has played on 3,500 recordings by such musical megastars as George Benson, Aretha Franklin, Elton John, Amy Grant, Chick Corea, Dolly Parton, Julio Iglesias, Barbra Streisand, and Al Jarreau.

A woodwind virtuoso, Almario worked with pioneering Latin/jazz group Mongo Santamaria and Charles Mingus before recording and touring with Roy Ayers, the Commodores, Linda Ronstadt, and Freddy Hubbard.

Complete musiciansAlmario and Laboriel have been friends since 1969, when both arrived at Boston’s Berklee College of Music from their native Latin America. Almario, who was raised in Colombia, and Laboriel, who hails from Mexico, were both born into families headed by professional musician fathers who exposed them to everything from calypso to classical. And both attended Roman Catholic schools, where the seeds of the Christian faith were planted deep in their souls.

Each came to the United States in part because of his love for American jazz (Almario said Cannonball Adderly’s sax “sounded like a bird flying free.” Laboriel said he wept when he first heard the music of Berklee alumnus Quincy Jones.) It wasn’t long after the two met

Colombia-born reed and woodwind player, composer, arranger, and clinician Justo Almario is a musical bridge-builder and a progenitor of Latin jazz-fusion. Over the years he has combined South American, Latin, Afro-Cuban, and funk rhythms to create a distinctive music which he holds forth on his own recordings, and in his live and recorded appearances as an in-demand sideman. Though his career recording as a leader didn't begin until the release of 1981's Interlude (which is regarded as a jazz-funk classic), Almario had amassed a lifetime of professional playing experience with Duke Ellington's last band, and as a live sideman/soloist with Mongo Santamaria, Charles Mingus, Freddie Hubbard, and Roy Ayers, among countless others. He has also registered hundreds of recording credits with pop musicians across a variety of genres including Master P, BeBe & CeCe Winans, Chaka Khan, and Herb Alpert. Further, his playing was featured on a number of influential soundtracks for popular films in the '80s and '90s, including Dirty Dancing, Trading Places, Mambo Kings, and The Birdcage. 2005's Love Thy Neighbor, though released privately with his quartet, has become a Latin jazz cult classic. In 2020, Almario appeared as a soloist with Jose Rizo's Mongorama (a Mongo Santamaria tribute band) for the album Mariposas Cantan. Almario was born in 1949 into a musical family in Sincelejo, Colombia and was raised in Medellin. He took up playing woodwinds as a child. Both his mother and father noticed his aptitude on flutes and clarinets; he picked up the saxophone in his teens. At 16 he was recruited by composer/arranger Jose Madrid to travel to the U.S. with his Cumbia Colombia band to showcase special arrangements of Colombian folk music. Two years later, on tour with another group in San Antonio, Texas, he met jazz pianist/educator Jorge Martinez Zapata, who encouraged him to apply for a scholarship to the Berklee College of Music. He followed the older man's instructions and w