Oscar Penas Quartet

Barcelona-born guitarist, arranger, and composer Oscar Peñas makes his Arts Garage debut with his quartet! A major league talent with a capacious musical imagination, Peñas embodies the limitless promise of jazz’s global reach. Peñas was already a widely respected figure on the international jazz scene before settling in New York City. Since then, he’s genuinely blossomed, creating a singular body of work that weaves together elements of jazz, Spanish folk music, and the European classical tradition. Often working with unorthodox instrumentation, in this case, violinist Sara Caswell, bassist Moto Fukushima, and drummer Richie Barshay, Peñas presents a performance that doesn’t blend disparate influences so much as stitches them together with an internal emotional logic. Peñas established a vital new voice in New York with two critically hailed albums, most recently 2014’s Music of Departures and Returns featuring Gil Goldstein, Paquito D’Rivera, and Esperanza Spalding. Peñas’ latest project Almadraba, inspired by Andalusia’s ancient sustainable fishing practices, featured bass legend Ron Carter and premiered in 2018 at the BAM Next Wave Festival.