David Virelles – Piano
Reggie Workman – Bass
Andrew Cyrille – Drums

This performance will be live broadcast on WKCR 89.9FM as a part of the stations 85th anniversary celebration

Close Up presents the ‘Orchard Street Jazz Festival’ from Sep 30th – October 5th bringing together a collection of some of the brightest musical innovators of our time. The festival also celebrates the release and launch of the club’s label with 7 bands performing who’s live records were released in September 2026. This festival is made in part by our partners at D’Addario.

Pianist/ composer David Virelles grew up in a musical family in Santiago de Cuba, steeped in the music of the Afro – Caribbean diaspora and Western classical music. Having been invited to Canada by Jane Bunnett in 2001, Virelles relocated to Toronto. He eventually graduated from Humber College, where he taught after graduating. During his stay in Toronto, he worked extensively all over Canada with his own groups and as a sideman. Moving to the United States in 2009, David organically brings together Cuban folkloric and New York improvisational worlds, an interest that started when he was 14. While he views his work as “a hundred percent traditional,” drawing from multiple traditions, in practice, he is creating a syncretic new personal music, rather than a mixture of elements or a recreation. This vision was showcased in Virelles’ recent world premiere of his interdisciplinary piece ORO, commissioned by Carnegie Hall.

Besides his solo work, he has also worked with Bunnett, Henry Threadgill, Ravi Coltrane, Andrew Cyrille, Reggie Workman, Oliver Lake, Terri Lyne Carrington, Tomasz Stanko, John Patitucci, Bill Frisell, Román Díaz, Milford Graves, Chris Potter, Tom Harrell, Brandon Ross, Wadada Leo Smith, Steve Coleman, Mark Turner, Paul Motian, Marcus Gilmore, Changuito, Chucho Valdés, Hilario Durán, Stanley Cowell, Hermeto Pascoal and Juan Pablo Torres, among others.

David’s 2012 album Continuum ended up on many “Best Of The Year” lists, being selected #1 by The New York Times. He released three projects on the legendary label ECM to critical acclaim, documenting a wide artistic range – Mbóko, Antenna, and Gnosis. His release Igbó Alákorin (The Singer’s Grove) Vol I & II is a celebration of the musical history of Santiago de Cuba. This record features Santiago music legends and it was recorded at the Siboney E.G.R.E.M. studios in this southeastern Cuban town. It was named Best Latin Jazz album by NPR in 2018. In 2020, Virelles released Transformación del Arcoiris with Pi Recordings, an electronic EP exclusively on the BandCamp platform. Virelles 2022 album NUNA (El Tivoli Music/ Pi Recordings), is an exploration of the solo piano setting. It was named one of the best albums of the year by different publications including The New York Times and NPR. It also won the Aaron Copland Fund for Music Award. His Carta release (Intakt Records) features David’s trio music with long time collaborators Ben Street and Eric McPherson. His most recent release is Igbó Alákorin (The Singer’s Grove) Vol III.

Virelles is a Shifting Foundation Fellow, a recipient of the Canada Council for the Arts, Louis Applebaum Award, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Cristobal Díaz Ayala Travel Grant, Grand Prix de Jazz de Montreal General Motors and The Jazz Gallery Commission. He has been named #1 Rising Star in the Piano category by DownBeat Magazine, and Artist of the Year by Musica Jazz Magazine (Italy). While a student at Humber College in Toronto he won the Oscar Peterson Prize, presented by Peterson himself. He is a recipient of the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts and the CINTAS Fellowship in Music Composition. David is currently a professor at the Zürich University of the Arts. He has been a guest lecturer at residences at the Basel Jazz Campus and the Focus Year special program, CalArts, UCLA, Siena Jazz Summer Workshop, JazzDanmarks Summer Sessions, Amsterdam Conservatory, Fayetteville State University and Harvard University. He currently tours as a solo performer (on acoustic piano or electronics); his trio, and with groups including the Andrew Cyrille Quartet, Trio Imagination (a collective group with Andrew Cyrille and Reggie Workman), and the Ravi Coltrane Quartet of which he has been a member for the last 11 years.

In 2024 Virelles received a commission from Carnegie Hall. The commissioned multidisciplinary work, entitled Oro (featuring Dafnis Prieto) was premiered at Zankel Hall on May 24, 2024, as part of a program curated by Tania León.

David Virelles is a Guggenheim Fellow and a Steinway artist.

Reginald “Reggie” Workman (born June 26, 1937 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is recognized as one of the most technically gifted American avant-garde jazz and hard bop double bassists in history. He is a teacher, composer, and jazz advocate whose style ranges from Bop, Post Bop and beyond.

Workman, a “Sound Scientist” is a 2020 recipient for the National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters Fellowship Award, the nation’s highest honor in jazz.

In 1961, Workman joined the John Coltrane Quartet, replacing Steve Davis. He was present for the saxophonist’s Live at the Village Vanguard sessions, and also recorded with a second bassist (Art Davis) on the 1961 albums, Olé Coltrane and Africa/Brass. Workman recorded frequently through the 1960s and performed with such icons as Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, Thelonious Monk, Max Roach, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Eric Dolphy, Gigi Gryce, Booker Little, Roy Haynes, Wayne Shorter, Red Garland, James Moody, Abbey Lincoln, Alice Coltrane, Jeri Allen, Marilyn Crispell, Jeanne Lee, Booker Ervin, Horace Silver, Benny Golson, Cedar Walton, Elvin Jones, McCoy Tyner, Curtis Fuller, Yusef Lateef, Pharoah Sanders, Herbie Mann, Archie Shepp, Clifford Jordan, Bobby Hutcherson, Sonny Fortune, Billy Harper, and David Murray. Workman, with pianist Tommy Flanagan and drummer Joe Chambers formed The Super Jazz Trio in 1978.

In the 1980s, he was the founding member of “Great Friends” and began leading his own groups: Top Shelf, and The Reggie Workman Ensemble.

Workman co-founded the historic Collective Black Artists and was Musical Director of the New Muse Community Museum (Brooklyn, NY). In the 1970s, he created the “Top Shelf” quartet. In 1978 he formed a Super Trio, with pianist Tommy Flanagan and drummer Joe Chambers. In 1983 he co-created the “On Time Jazz Series” and produced at the Village Gate. In 1985 he created Trio Transitions with Freddie Waits and Mulgrew Miller. In 1998 he created Trio Three with Oliver Lake and Andrew Cyrille. In 1990 he created the Reggie Workman Ensemble with John Purcell, Jeanne Lee, Marilyn Crispell, Gerry Hemingway, and Don Byron and Jason Hwang. He created Ashanti’s Message (septet), and ”Brew” as well as “Groove Ship.” In 1998, Reggie Workman inaugurated The Montclair Academy of Dance & Laboratory of Music (for students from ages three to eighteen). In recent years Reggie has been working with new music luminaries such as Geri Allen, Jason Moran, Vijay Iyer and his longstanding collaboration, TRIO 3 (Oliver Lake, Reggie Workman, Andrew Cyrille).

Master drummer and composer Andrew Cyrille, began studying science at St. John’s University while playing jazz in the evenings. He formally studied drums and composition first with Philly Joe Jones in 1958, and later at The Juilliard School and Hartnett School of Music. At that time, he also performed with Mary Lou Williams, Coleman Hawkins, Roland Hanna and Illinois Jacquet, Kenny Dorham, Freddie Hubbard, Walt Dickerson, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, and Nigerian percussionist Babatunde Olatunji among others.

Beginning in 1964, Cyrille’s 11-year iconic collaboration with pianist Cecil Taylor would define the category of free jazz drumming and establish Cyrille in the vanguard of jazz drummers and percussionists. From 1969, Cyrille formed several percussion groups featuring notable drummers such as Kenny Clarke, Milford Graves, Famoudou Don Moye, Rashied Ali, Daniel Ponce, Michael Carvin and Vladimir Tarasov. Since leaving Taylor’s group, he went on to work with formidable artists as David Murray, Muhal Richard Abrams, Mal Waldron, Horace Tapscott, James Newton, Peter Brötzmann and Oliver Lake. Cyrille was the drummer on Billy Bang’s A Tribute to Stuff Smith’, notable for being the last studio session of Sun Ra.

Cyrille has toured and performed throughout North America, Europe, Africa, and the former USSR. He formed Haitian Fascination with legendary Haitian musicians, percussionist Frisner Augustin and guitarist Alix ‘tit’ Pascal. For over 27 years, Cyrille was a member of TRIO3 with Oliver Lake and Reggie Workman. Cyrille leads his own groups in various formations and has performed in duo, trio and larger configurations and big bands with luminaries such as Archie Shepp, Roswell Rudd, Marilyn Crispell, Bill Frisell, Richard Teitelbaum, Irene Schweizer, Dave Douglas, Joe Lovano, Jason Moran, Vijay Iyer, David Virelles, Bill McHenry, Ben Street, Henry Grimes, William Parker, Soren Kjaergaard, and others. In addition to Andrew Cyrille’s 21st Century Big Band Unlimited, his most recent big band performance was with Mark Masters’ American Jazz Institute Ensemble.

Cyrille is a recipient of the Doris Duke Artist Award (2020), commissioned composer in Chamber Music America’s New Jazz Works program (2019), Vision Festival Lifetime Achievement Award honoree by Arts for Art (2019), Inc., Guggenheim Fellow in Composition (1999), and has received multiple National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) grants for performance and composition, Meet the Composer/ AT&T- Rockefeller Foundation grants, an Arts International Award to perform with his quintet in Accra, Ghana and West Africa, and ASCAP awards for meritorious achievement in percussion composition.