Principles of Afro Cuban Batá for the Jazz Improviser with Harris Eisenstadt

Age: Adult
Event Type: Workshop
Department: Theory and Improvisation
Day: Sun
Instructor: Harris Eisenstadt
Status: inperson event
Explore how principles of Afro Cuban batá rhythm and song can deepen and expand your approach to jazz improvisation. Through the study of polyrhythm, melodic placement, and the relationship to clave, participants will examine how these elements function within one of the Black Atlantic’s great classical traditions and how they can be applied creatively in contemporary improvisation. Audio and video links, along with transcriptions of songs and rhythms, will be provided in advance to support student preparation. Open to instrumentalists of all levels and backgrounds.
About Harris Eisenstadt
Harris Eisenstadt (b. Toronto, 1975) is a Brooklyn-based drummer and composer whose music moves between the intimate and the expansive, with what The New Yorker calls a “deep-sighted and elastic view of improvised music.” The New York Times notes that “he often seems intent on extracting consonance from dissonance or forging ungainliness into grace.”
Over the past three decades, Eisenstadt has appeared on around eighty recordings, released more than twenty albums as a bandleader, and led numerous projects across a wide range of settings. In 2024, he won DownBeat’s International Critics Poll for Rising Star Percussion after years of steady recognition. His albums regularly appear on year-end critics’ lists for their adventurous spirit and clarity of vision.
A longtime explorer of African and Diaspora music traditions, Eisenstadt has made extended research trips to Gambia, Senegal, Cuba, Brazil, Mexico City, and Miami. He frequently performs Afro Cuban ceremonial drumming in and around New York City.
Eisenstadt has published essays, articles, and radio programs through NPR, Public Radio International, Afropop Worldwide, and in John Zorn’s Arcana series. His recording Canada Day IV (2015) was featured on NPR’s Fresh Air.
His 2018 music film We Are All Worthy of One Another, a collaboration with the Matanzas, Cuba-based artist collective El Almacén, brought together more than thirty Cuban folkloric and classical musicians and filmmakers.
While best known for leading small and mid-sized improvising ensembles, Eisenstadt has also composed through-written works for larger forces. His first orchestral piece, Palimpsest, debuted with the American Composers Orchestra in 2011, followed by Four Songs (2013), commissioned by the Brooklyn Conservatory Community Orchestra. His first string quartet, Whatever Will Happen That Will Also Be, was recorded by the Mivos Quartet in 2015.