Events

Participants

Participants

David Sánchez, tenor saxophone, bandleader
Ricardo Rodríguez, bass
Tony Escapa, drums
Alex Brown, piano
Camilo Molina, percussion
Jhan Lee Aponte, percussion

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Bios

Bios

David Sánchez

David Sánchez is a GRAMMY Award-winning saxophonist, composer, and educator from Puerto Rico, recognized worldwide as one of the finest saxophonists and bandleaders of his generation. His music draws deeply from Afro-Caribbean and Pan-African traditions, which he blends seamlessly with jazz.

DHis acclaimed and multi-nominated recordings include Obsesión, Melaza, Coral, and Carib. Sánchez has performed and recorded with legends such as Dizzy Gillespie, Eddie Palmieri, Kenny Barron, Charlie Haden, Roy Hargrove, Roy Haynes, Pat Metheny, and Elvin Jones.

DSánchez is a member of the prestigious SFJazz Collective, representing the SFJazz organization. A dedicated educator, he is an active faculty member in the RJAM program at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

DHis Spring 2026 Residency at the Hemispheric Institute will reflect on his career as an artist, with a special focus on his upcoming 2026 album, TAMBÓ. Sánchez has conceived TAMBÓ as a musical work and a living Pan-African archive, with music and rhythms stretching across the Atlantic and the Americas. During his residency, Sánchez has convened public conversations and listening sessions that foreground composition, musical history, performance and memory, and collective participation.

Alana Casanova-Burgess

Alana Casanova-Burgess is the co-creator, host and producer of WNYC Studios’ La Brega: Stories of the Puerto Rican Experience, hailed as one of the “Best Podcasts of 2021” by The New Yorker and The New York Times.

Previously, Casanova-Burgess was a reporter and producer for WNYC’s The Brian Lehrer Show and the Peabody award-winning national public radio show and podcast On the Media. In 2018, her extensive reporting from Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria led to her being named a Livingston Awards finalist for the On the Media special “After the Storm,” which looked at recovery and media coverage.

In 2021, she received an Exceptional Journalism Award from the Women’s Media Center for her work on La Brega. She was also part of a team that won the Alfred I. duPont–Columbia University Award for Blindspot: Tulsa Burning, a six-part podcast co-produced with The HISTORY Channel about the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 and history of racial violence in America.

Casanova-Burgess’ audio journalism work has been featured in The Guardian, 99% Invisible, Throughline, The New Yorker Radio Hour, and Latino USA, among other radio shows and podcasts. She is an alumna of the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, where she now serves as an adjunct professor. She has roots in the Caribbean and Brooklyn.

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