Yale Bulletin and Calendar

April 5, 2002Volume 30, Number 24



Eddie Palmieri




Chubb Fellowship hosting
visit by salsa star Palmieri

Famed salsa musician Eddie Palmieri will visit Yale as a Chubb Fellow Tuesday-Wednesday, April 22-23.

Palmieri will hold a concert on Tuesday at 8:30 p.m. in Woolsey Hall, corner of College and Grove streets, and take part in a symposium on Wednesday at 4 p.m. in the Yale University Art Gallery's McNeil Lecture Hall (enter on High Street).

Tickets for the performance are free and may be obtained by calling (203) 432-8873. Admission to the symposium is also free.

The Chubb Fellowship is honoring Palmieri for his contributions to Latino culture and music. Palmieri is a seven-time Grammy Award winner and one of the most prolific and popular Latin musicians in the world.

Born in Spanish Harlem, New York, in 1936, Palmieri began piano studies at an early age, along with his older brother, the renowned salsa pianist Charlie Palmieri. At age 11, Eddie Palmieri made his classical debut at Carnegie Hall.

In the late 1950s, Palmieri joined the Tito Rodriguez Orchestra where he spent one year before forming his own group, Conjunto La Perfecta, in 1961. La Perfecta featured a trombone section, led by the late Barry Rogers, instead of trumpets. This was rare in Latin music and became part of Palmieri's signature style. Palmieri's band was soon competing with the big three orchestras of the time: Machito, Tito Puente and Tito Rodriguez.

Commenting on his close connection with Afro-Cuban roots, Palmieri has said: "In Cuba, there was a development and crystallization of rhythmical patterns that have excited people for years. Cuban music provides the fundament. Whatever has to be built must be built from there."

Palmieri has produced 32 albums during his four decades of performance. In 1988, the Smithsonian Institution recorded and documented two of Palmieri's performances for their catalog of the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.

In 1998 Palmieri received an honorary doctorate from the Berklee College of Music. He was commissioned to compose a suite for the Ballet Hispanico of New York in 1999.

Palmieri's seven Grammy Awards include the first ever given to a Latin artist, the award for Best Latin Album, which he received in 1975 for "The Sun of Latin Music." He won in that category again in the following year for "Unfinished Masterpiece." His other Grammy-winning albums are "Palo Pa' Rumba" in 1984, "Solito" in 1985, "La Verdad" in 1987 and "Masterpiece" in 2000. His newest CD, "La Perfecta II," will be released in April.

The Chubb Fellowship is devoted to encouraging and aiding Yale students interested in the operations of government, culture and public service. Established in 1936 through the generosity of Hendon Chubb (Yale 1895), the program is based in Timothy Dwight College. Each year three or four distinguished men and women have been appointed as Visiting Chubb Fellows. Chubb Fellows spend their time at Yale in close, informal contact with students, and deliver a public lecture. Former Chubb Fellows have included Presidents George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter; authors Octavio Paz and Toni Morrison; former New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman; and journalist Walter Cronkite.


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Former director of Holocaust Museum to speak at master's tea

Campus Notes



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