Peter Zak & Marcos Varela

Peter Zak & Marcos Varela
New York, NY
Grant amount: $15,000 

About the Artist

Eddie Henderson Quartet, featuring Peter Zak, Marcos Varela, Sylvia Cuenca

Eddie Henderson
Henderson was born in New York City on October 26, 1940.  At the age of nine he was given an informal lesson by Louis Armstrong, and he continued to study the instrument as a teenager in San Francisco, where he grew up, after his family moved there in 1954, at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

After completing his medical education, Henderson went back to the Bay area for his medical internship and residency. It was a week-long gig with Herbie Hancock's Mwandishi band that led to a three-year job, lasting from 1970 to 1973. In addition to the three albums recorded by the group under Hancock's name, Henderson recorded his first two albums, Realization (1972) and Inside Out (1973), with Hancock and the Mwandishi group. His recording output as a leader includes his two most recent: Be Cool and Shuffle and Deal.

Peter Zak
Jazz pianist and composer Peter Zak performs and records both as a sideman and leader of his own groups. His credits include George Coleman, Jimmy Cobb, Ryan Kisor, Etta Jones, Peter Bernstein, Eddie Henderson, Eric Alexander, Walt Weiskopf and Jon Hendricks, among many others. His twelve albums as a leader, including his latest recording, “One Mind,” have earned consistent praise from publications such as DownBeat, JazzTimes, Financial Times, Jazz Journal, and the New York Times. As a composer, his awards include a $10,000 jazz chamber music commission from the Doris Duke Foundation, which he performed both at Smoke Jazz Club and the Jazz Gallery in New York, with drummer Al Foster, and bassist Paul Gill. He has performed with various groups at every major jazz venue in New York City, including the Village Vanguard, the Blue Note, Smoke, and the Jazz Standard; his current trio performs in New York, around the U.S. and at festivals and concerts internationally. He has been teaching at the New School since 1995.

Marcos Varela
In his hometown of Houston, Texas, Marcos Varela attended the renowned High School for the Performing & Visual Arts. After high school and on his path to becoming a professional musician he moved to nyc to attend the New School and is now a active member in the New York jazz and contemporary music scene. He has made a name for himself as a in-demand bassist in the city and worldwide and has regularly performed and recorded with a variety of ensembles and band leaders such as Ingrid Jensen, Billy Hart, Geri Allen, The Mingus Big Band, Antoine Roney, Nasheet Waits among many others. He was selected as a member of Vincent Gardner's-Jazz Houston, which has featured guests such as Gregory Porter, Wynton Marsalis, Ruben Blades and Jon Faddis. Varela has also worked as a composer for several film and television projects, including director Domenica Cameron-Scorsese's film Roots in Water.

Sylvia Cuenca
A New York-based drummer who has performed with Joe Henderson, Clark Terry, Charlie Haden, Kenny Barron, and Eddie Henderson, among many others. Recently, she was a guest clinician at the Sisters in Jazz Program at the IAJE Convention in NYC and the Mary Lou Williams Jazz Festival at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. Cuenca has been a longtime faculty member at the Jazz for Teens and Pre-Teen Program at NJPAC and the Stanford Jazz Workshop in California.