On Friday, November 7th at 8pm, 2025 Suzanne Fiol Curatorial Fellow Kenneth Jiménez presents the first live performance of Jardineros (“Gardeners”), concluding his year-long fellowship. Taking place at ISSUE’s 22 Boerum Pl. theater, the evening brings together Cuban multi-instrumentalist Hery Paz with Román Díaz (percussion/voice) and Francisco Mela (drums) to search beyond the forms and codes of traditional Cuban musical structures. Throughout his fellowship, Jiménez has invited artists from the Caribbean, Central, and South America to explore music’s complex relationship to tradition and genre.
After recording their first album in 2023 under the independent Brooklyn label 577 Records, the trio will present a set of improvised music and poetry that evoke the magic of Afro-Caribbean culture, also reflected in the photographic series commissioned for this event by Costa Rican photographer Emiliano Zúñiga Hernández—who has provided the visual language for all of Jimenez’s fellowship programs this year. The trio reworks syncretic, rhythmic and poetic materials, transforming them into a deeply personal and improvisational practice. Cuban writer Lea Cárdenas says that talking about what is Cuban in art, more specifically in music, might seem like an easy task; Jardineros troubles conceptions of mysticism, cliché, or folkloric preservation, offering a poetic declaration of freedom—cultivating new terrain for uncompromising dialogue among Cuban improvisers. It is the construction of a path in which contemporaneity and tradition go hand in hand.
Hery Paz is a New York based Cuban multi-instrumentalist, composer and visual artist. At the heart of his artistic practice we find a resolute dedication to expand the frontiers of his cultural philosophy, crystalizing an amalgam of expressions between improvisation, composition, visual arts and poetry. His playing is imbued with a depth of purpose, a sense of patience and a willingness to venture into the unknown. Paz is an integral element of the creative music scene in New York City where he has worked with Dave Liebman, William Parker, Cooper Moore, Ralph Alessi, Francisco Mela, Tom Rainey, John Hebert, Thomas Morgan, Román Díaz, Kris Davis, Nate Wooley, Miguel Zenón, Leo Genovese, Ethan Iverson, Gerald Cleaver, Afro Cuban All Stars Band, Juan De Marcos Gonzales, Dan Weiss, Jacob Sacks & Joe Morris. Paz is part of the Tony Award winning band for BUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB at the Schoenfeld Theater in New York.
Cuban born master percussionist Román Díaz is a “living repository” of Afro-Cuban culture. He is a noted scholar of Cuban religious and folkloric music as well as a composer and performer of contemporary Afro-Cuban music and Jazz . He has performed and recorded with Cuban diva Mercedíta Valdes, Canadian Jane Bunnett, Juan Carlos Formell, Paquito D’Rivera, and folkloric artist Orlando “Puntilla” Rios, and pianist Danílo Pérez. He has also recorded with the Afro-Cuban folkloric groups; Yoruba Andabo, Raices Profundas and Los Marqueses de Atares. He has also performed at Jazz at Lincoln Center, The Kennedy Center and the Smithsonian Museum. As a member of the seminal Rumba ensemble, Yoruba Andabo, Díaz aided in the creation of the sound that has defined contemporary Rumba since the 1980s in Cuba and around the world.
Drummer Francisco Mela is a favorite among jazz’s best performers including Chucho Valdés, Joe Lovano, Kenny Barron and McCoy Tyner. Born in 1968 in Bayamo, Cuba, Mela moved to Boston in 2000 to attend Berklee College of Music, where he now teaches. Since then he has become an integral part of Joe Lovano’s quartet, McCoy Tyner’s trio, and Kenny Barron’s trio, and has expanded his vision as a bandleader. In addition he has worked with Esperanza Spaulding, Lionel Loueke, Joanne Brackeen, Jane Bunnett, Anat Cohen, and many others. Mela has released four albums as a leader, all receiving positive critical acclaim. His newest project, “FE,” is with the latest iteration of his Crash Trio with pianist Leo Genovese, bassist Gerald Cannon and special guest John Scofield. Mela has also been working with new rising star Kris Davis.
