Song Story: Má Teodora

Javier Diaz, the featured vocalist on our recording, is a master percussionist, educator, and composer active in New York City. We were delighted that he agreed to bring his vocal prowess to the table for this project. As a percussionist, Javier plays regularly with the American Symphony Orchestra, chamber music groups, and Latin Jazz/Afro-Cuban folkloric groups in the New York area. He has performed with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, New York Chamber Symphony, New Jersey Symphony, New York Pops, New York Perspectives Ensemble, John Adams’ Zankel Hall New Music Band, and the Hilliard Ensemble. He has been the principal percussionist in the Broadway productions of Guys and Dolls, Phil Collins’ Tarzan, The Wiz, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Rocky, Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of The Temptations, Gloria Estefan’s On Your Feet!, and Once on This Island. Javier’s studio credits include Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story, Lin Manuel Miranda’s In The Heights, ECM's Tituli (with the Hilliard Ensemble) by Stephen Hartke, two albums with David Sanborn, including Time and the River (produced by Marcus Miller), award-winning films such as Tango Flush and Jesus Camp, and many TV and radio commercials.

As an Afro-Cuban/Pop percussion specialist, Javier has appeared with: Sean Kingston, Diana Ross, Gladys Knight, Chaka Khan, Patty La Belle, Lázaro Galarraga’s Afro-Cuban All Stars, percussionists Angel Luís Figueroa, Cándido Camero, Román Díaz, Pedro Martínez, The Pan-American Jazz Band, The Ethnix, Anette Aguilar’s Latin Jazz Group, Marta Topferova, Edmar Castañeda, Tribal Sage World Music duo project with multi-percussionist Roger Squitero, World Percussion group Kalunga, and the New York World Music Institute.

An active educator, Javier has taught concert percussion at El Sistema de Orquestas Juveniles e Infantiles de Venezuela, University of Connecticut, Rutgers University, Queens College (CUNY), New York University, and at his private teaching studio in New York City and New Jersey. He has also taught Afro-Cuban percussion seminars, classes, and clinics at the Peabody Institute, University of Southern California, Percussion Artists Workshops Los Angeles/New York, Los Angeles School District, The Juilliard School, Rutgers University, Queens College, New York University, Boston Conservatory, University of Minnesota, and Mannes School of Music in New York City.

Mr. Diaz currently teaches the Afro-Latin percussion survey at the Juilliard School and directs the Afro-Cuban Percussion Ensemble at Rutgers University. His most recent book on Afro-Cuban percussion, The Afro-Cuban Handbook, has become an instant classic of the percussion literature.

An alumnus of El Sistema de Orquestas Juveniles e Infantiles de Venezuela and the Aspen Music Festival, Javier holds a BM from the University of Southern California, a MM from The Juilliard School, and a DMA from The Graduate Center (City University of New York).

Percussionist Sebastian Guerrero was born in Brazil to a Peruvian father and an American mother, and raised in New Jersey. Sebastian has studied with master percussionists in New Orleans, New York City, Cuba, Brazil and Peru, giving him a broad musical vocabulary. Sebastian has studied extensively with members of “Danza Contemporanea de Cuba” as well as with “Grupo Afro-Cuba de Matanzas” in Cuba. He has studied with various master Afro-Cuban musicians such as Roman Diaz, Michael Spiro, and Regino Jimenez. He has performed Cuban music with ”Los Afortunados,” “Oriki Omi Odara,” and his own group “Grupo Ara Oko.” Sebastian was awarded the 2001–2002 Folklife Apprenticeship Grant from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts for the study of Afro-Cuban ceremonial drumming. He is an initiated drummer in the bata drumming tradition under master drummer Roman Diaz.

Sebastian is very active as a freelance percussionist and clinician in the New York area. He has recorded, performed and toured with many artists such as Culture Club, Meshell Ndegeocello, Boy George, Cyndi Lauper, Princeton University Chapel Orchestra, Aguadulce Dance Theater, The Chesterfields, Katy Pfaffl Band, Tres del Solar, Grupo Pinta y Canela, and Sura Percussion Ensemble. Broadway credits include Burn the Floor, On Your Feet, the Story of Emilio and Gloria Estefan and the 2018 Tony award winner for best revival musical, Once On This Island.

As a teacher, Sebastian has served on the music faculty of The Pennington School, Lawrenceville School, Hamilton Park Montessori School and is currently teaching upper school music at The Peck School in Morristown, NJ. He is a fully certified Orff music instructor and trained Music Together teacher.

Ben Lapidus, featured on the tres and marimbula in our recording of "Má Teodora," is a Grammy-nominated musician and professor. As a scholar he has published widely on Latin music. He has performed and recorded throughout the world as a bandleader and supporting musician.

Since the 1990s, Lapidus has performed and/or recorded Cuban tres, Puerto Rican cuatro, guitar, voice, and other instruments on film soundtracks, video games, television commercials, and albums with some of the most notable musicians in Latin music and jazz. Some of these collaborations include performances and/or recordings with Andy and Jerry González, various members of the Buena Vista Social Club, Bobby Carcassés, Orlando “Cachaíto” López, NEA Jazz Master Cándido Camero, Larry Harlow, Ruben Blades, Típica 73, John “Dandy” Rodríguez, David Oquendo, Pedrito Martínez, Roman Díaz, Paul Carlon, Larry Goldings, Chico Álvarez, Alfredo “Chocolate” Armenteros, and many others.

As the leader of the Latin jazz group, Sonido Isleño (founded in 1996), he has performed throughout North and South America, Europe, and the Caribbean while releasing five internationally acclaimed albums of his original compositions. In 2007, Lapidus served as musical director and arranger for Garota de Ipanema (JVC/Victor Japan) with Kaori Fujii and toured Japan twice. In 2008, he recorded Herencia Judía and in 2014, he released his eighth album as a leader, Ochósi Blues. Blues for Ochún (2023) is his ninth album as a leader. As a composer, Lapidus’ music has been recorded by groups in Cuba and Japan, and has been featured in documentaries and television. In 2015, Latinjazz USA awarded Lapidus a lifetime achievement award for his contributions to Afro-Latin music. In 2015, he wrote the liner notes, contributed an original composition, sang, and played electric guitar and Cuban tres on Andy González’s Grammy-nominated album, Entre Colegas.

As profiled on the 2023 television show, Shades of Us, Benjamin Lapidus was born in Hershey, PA in 1972 to first-generation Brooklynites and the family moved almost 15 times before returning to New York City when Lapidus was 14. Trained in piano from a young age, he moved through a variety of instruments including trumpet and bass before concentrating on the guitar. Lapidus was exposed to music by his grandmother and his father, who played in Latin and jazz bands in the Catskills in the 1950s. Through his father’s record collection and stories of his father’s visits with his Latin American relatives, the seeds of Latin music were planted. Yet it wasn’t until the 1980s that the youngest Lapidus became immersed in Latin music, when he moved to a predominantly Latin neighborhood in New York City, where numerous important musicians also resided. Living a block away from Mikel’s jazz club, Lapidus still has vivid memories of practicing in Mario Rivera’s house or seeing Mario Bauzá walk down the street. Deciding he needed a complete musical education, Lapidus earned two degrees from Oberlin Conservatory and Oberlin College, becoming one of the program’s first jazz guitar graduates. In 1994, Lapidus started to play the Puerto Rican cuatro and Cuban tres. After leading his own quartet at festivals and clubs throughout Europe and winning a grant to study briefly with Steve Lacy in Paris, he returned to the U.S. and worked with Joe McPhee, Joe Giardullo, Tani Tabal, Thomas Workman, and other creative improvisers.

At the same time, Lapidus began performing with Larry Harlow, Alex Torres, and other Latin music luminaries in New York and Puerto Rico. Lapidus earned a Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology at the CUNY Graduate Center in 2002. His travels to Cuba acquainted him with distant relatives and grounded him in the music of Eastern Cuba. He has taught guitar and Cuban tres at the New School and popular music of the Caribbean, Latin music in New York, and world music at Queens College and John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY. Today, Lapidus is a professor in the department of art and music at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and on the Doctoral Faculty of the Graduate Center, CUNY. In addition, he has served as scholar-in-residence with the New York Center for Jungian Studies and the Jewish Museum during several humanitarian missions to the Jewish communities of Cuba between 2004–2016. In 2008, Lapidus published the first-ever book on the Eastern Cuban musical genre changüí called Origins of Cuban Music and Dance: Changüí (Scarecrow Press). He has published numerous peer-reviewed articles and book chapters, translations, and presented papers at international conferences on Cuban music, Puerto Rican music, Latin jazz, and improvisation. He has also written liner notes for a number of recordings. In 2013, Lapidus won a prestigious National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) fellowship for his critically acclaimed book New York and the International Sound of Latin Music, 1940–1990 (University Press of Mississippi, 2021). With endorsements from Rubén Blades, Ilán Stavins and other prominent academics around the world, this ground-breaking book has been featured on BBC 3 Music Matters, NPR’s Afropop and Alt.Latino shows as well as the Miami International Book Fair and countless news outlets. The book maintains its bestseller ranking in Amazon’s top 20 salsa books since its release.