BRATTLEBORO — Adam O'Farrill and his quartet, Stranger Days, will perform at the Vermont Jazz Center on Saturday, April 29, at 8 p.m.
O'Farrill is an award-winning, first-call trumpeter from Brooklyn. A regular member of the Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra (led by his Grammy-award winning father, Arturo O'Farrill) and the ensembles of Rudresh Mahanthappa, he performs and records with top artists such as Christian McBride, Vijay Ayer, Jason Lindner and others.
He created his quartet, Stranger Days, to hone his compositions and develop his unique notions of form, improvisation, and interaction. It is a collaborative project he shares with his brother, drummer Zack O'Farrill, saxophonist Chad Lefkowitz-Brown, and bassist Walter Stinson.
The structures they generate are influenced by O'Farrill's passions for cinema and video gaming, and they assemble jazz-based compositions that tell stories inspired by these passions.
Zack describes the programmatic nature of the music in the liner notes of their self-titled album: “The compositions on this record aren't about blowing solos, they're about telling stories, creating sets and scenes ... each instrument is taking on a specific role as a character … In rehearsals we spend a lot of time discussing what the narrative direction of the composition is and how our playing should reflect that.”