Main Event: Alessandro Penezzi, guitar, and Edwin Colón Zayas, cuatro

The Main Event Program for the 11th Annual Festival of Brazilian Choro features two great performers in this genre: Alessandro Penezzi, guitar, and Edwin Colón Zayas, cuatro. Please join us for an incredible concert featuring these two guests from São Paulo and Puerto Rico.

Bios of Guest Performers:

Considered one of the great Brazilian guitarists of his generation, composer, arranger and guitarist Alessandro Penezzi was born in Piracicaba, São Paulo, Brazil in February, 1974.. He began his musical studies at seven years old. A multiinstrumentalist, Alessandro plays 7-string guitar, tenor guitar, cavaquinho, mandolin and flute. His teachers were Carlos Coimbra, Jair T. de Paula, Sérgio Belluco, and João Dias Carrasqueira. He has taught at California Brazil Camp since 2010 and is building a following in the US as one of the great virtuosos and composers in the Brazilian popular music genre. He resides in Piracicaba and São Paulo, Brazil. and tours regularly to Europe and Africa. He has recorded over 40 CD’s of music with Brazil’s most renowned musicians. He has just completed a US tour performing choro with mandolinist Mike Marshall.

Born and raised in Orocovis, Puerto Rico, Edwin Colón Zayas is known internationally as the master of the cuatro, the national instrument of Puerto Rico. The cuatro, shaped like a small guitar with five double-coursed strings, became the preferred instrument for performing música jíbara (music of the countryside), heard in the small central-island towns of Puerto Rico. In 2017, he toured Colombia with Alessandro Penezzi performing Brazilian Choro as a duo.

His collaborations span classical, South American, Latin popular music, and jazz. Highlights of his career include performing at the inaugural concert of the San Juan Pops Orchestra (1991), participating in the International Guitar Festival in San Juan, and receiving a Grammy nomination in 2008 for his album Reafirmación. Though he has shared stages with Latin stars like Marc Anthony and Carlos Vives, Colón Zayas remains deeply committed to Puerto Rico’s traditional music community. For him, the love of the music begins with the love of the cuatro: “I have a sentimental bond with the instrument. Apart from my family, my parents, my wife, my daughters, that I love so much, my instrument has a special place in my life.”