By DownBeat

Cuban-born, U.S.-based pianist Elio Villafranca’s 10th album is a deep dive into his past as reflected by his current life. A two-disc set featuring a dozen original compositions and complex arrangements for a septet amended by percussionists, singers including Cécile McLorin Salvant and, briefly, acoustic guitar, Standing By The Vrossroads is ambitious.

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By BMI

Watch as we get to know BMI Composer, Elio Villafranca.

Elio Villafranca was born in the Pinar del Río province of Cuba. Villafranca is a Steinway Artist, Grammy-Nominated, 2014 Jalc Millennium Swing Award! recipient, pianist and composer.

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Four jazz musicians—guitarist Rez Abbasi, bassoonist Katherine Young, and pianists Helen Sung and Elio Villafranca—have been named 2021 Guggenheim Fellows in Music Composition. The three are among 13 who won in that category and among 184 artists, writers, scholars, and scientists who received fellowships. The amount awarded to each Fellow varies according to the needs and merits of the respective applications.

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By DownBeat

Jazz artists Rez Abasi, Helen Sung and Elio Vilafranco have been awarded Guggenheim fellowships for 2021. They join 184 artists, writers, scholars and scientists receiving the honor.

Presented annually by the board of trustees of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the fellowships are granted through a rigorous peer-review process of nearly 3,000 applicants.

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184 artists, writers, scholars and scientists awarded Fellowships

NEW YORK (April 8, 2021): Today, the Board of Trustees of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation approved the awarding for Guggenheim Fellowships to a diverse group of 184 artists, writers, scholars, and scientists. These exceptional candidates were chosen through a rigorous peer-review process from almost 3,000 applicants.

Created in 1925 by Senator Simon and Olga Guggenheim in memory of their son John Simon Guggenheim, the Foundation has offered fellowships to exceptional individuals in pursuit of scholarship in any field of knowledge and creation in any art form, under the freest possible conditions.

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By DownBeat

Elio Villafranca wins the International Critics Poll Rising Star in the Keyboard Category two years in a row.

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By Suzanne Lorge

Jazz pianism today stands at an apex. There have been other moments in the music’s history when innovation rushed ahead of performers and listeners. But more than a century after jazz’s emergence, there are countless virtuosic pianists out there composing, recording and seeking a new vision for the genre.

As a classical music student in Havana, Cuba, Elio Villafranca would spend his lunch money on blank cassettes so he could make tapes of jazz musicians from abroad. Bootlegged recordings like this were the only way that young musicians in Cuba could hear jazz, and Villafranca often used up a month’s worth of lunch money to gain access to precious underground imports.

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By Mitsutaka Yanag

"50 Best Jazz Albums of 2018" by Jazz The New Chapter (with Playlist) selected by Mitsutaka Yanagi.

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Elio Villafranca’s newest album Cinque was nominated for a Grammy today in the category Best Latin Jazz Album

For vocal or instrumental albums containing at least 51% playing time of newly recorded material. The intent of this category is to recognize recordings that represent the blending of jazz with Latin, Iberian-American, Brazilian, and Argentinian tango music.

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By Eugene Holley Jr.

Pianist/composer Elio Villafranca is the latest in a decades-long line of Cuban musicians who has integrated African, European and Pan-American musical concepts. His two-disc set is a compelling and complex dedication to Cinque, the Sierra Leonean who led a bloody revolt aboard the Cuban-bound, slave ship Amistad in 1839 and later was freed by John Quincy Adams.

The ensemble here primarily consists of Villafranca’s group, The Jass Syncopaters. With a pianistic style that echoes Duke Ellington and McCoy Tyner, the bandleader narrates Cinque’s story with references to the Haitian Revolution and the free Maroon colonies of runaway slaves.

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