“I don’t guess I’m going to excite you; I know I’m going to excite you,” Palmieri said in an August 1994 DownBeat feature.
(Photo: Andrew Palace)Aug 12, 2025 10:33 AM
Famed Latin jazz composer, bandleader and pianist Eddie Palmieri passed away in his New Jersey home on Aug. 6. He was 88. A product of the Spanish Harlem neighborhood in New York…
Aug 11, 2025 11:56 PM
Eddie Palmieri is a dynamo at the piano: digging deep into a solo, rolling out the complex pattern of a montuno, and leaping from his keyboard to urge on his jazz-hot Afro-Caribbean orchestra as it tears through hip harmonic motifs set in rock-steady claves to thrill smart listeners and swirling dancers alike. As he has since the ’60s with such bands as La Perfecta and Harlem River Drive — and with successive generations of jazz players from vibist Cal Tjader to the final alumni of Art Blakey’s college of musical knowledge — Palmieri rejects…
