Latin Percussionist Ray Mantilla Perks Up Audiences
At Long Island University’s Brooklyn Campus, March 25

Brooklyn, N.Y. – Noted jazz and Latin percussionist Ray Mantilla, who has collaborated with jazz greats Dizzy Gillespie, Max Roach and Charles Mingus, will perform and discuss his experiences at a workshop for jazz students at Long Island University’s Brooklyn Campus.

Part of the Music Department’s Jazz Clinic and Concert Series, the workshop will take place on Tuesday, March 25, at 4 p.m., in the Humanities Building Conference Hall. It is free and open to the public.

Born in 1934 in the South Bronx, where Afro-Cuban roots mixed with jazz, Mantilla was on the bandstand by age 21, playing salsa on conga drums. Over the years, he toured nationally and in Europe and Japan with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers; and he performed and recorded with many major figures in jazz, including singers Eartha Kitt and Josephine Baker, as well as Tito Puente, Herbie Mann and Freddie Hubbard.

In 1977, as a member of the historic goodwill ensemble led by Dizzy Gillespie, Mantilla became the first North American Latin musician to step on Cuban soil since the Cuban revolution.

Mantilla has appeared on more than 200 albums/CDs, and recorded six as a bandleader, establishing him as one of the most significant jazz and Latin percussionists today.

For more information, call the Music Department at (718) 488-1051.

In addition to a B.A. in traditional studies, the Music Department offers a B.F.A. degree in Jazz Studies. Students may study privately with professionals off-campus for credit. The program can be tailored to suit students’ needs with either a minor or double major in other fields.Long Island University opened its Brooklyn Campus in 1926, welcoming a diverse population at a time when other major universities enforced quota systems against racial and ethnic minorities. Some 30,000 students currently are enrolled at the university’s three residential and three regional campuses, including nearly 11,000 at the Brooklyn Campus. Located at the corner of Flatbush Avenue Extension and DeKalb Avenue in Downtown Brooklyn, the Campus is accessible to all major bus and subway routes and the Long Island Rail Road.