DANCEFEST! Labor Day Weekend, 2008
Centennial Hall

Friday Night Dance With Blue 4 Trio

Casey MacGill's Blue 4 Trio performs music that swings. Some have called it the Nat "King" Cole Trio meets the Mills Brothers. Others have called it Fats Waller meets Fats Domino. Slim Galliard meets Fred Astaire. Its music from the ''20's to the '60's, all happening at the same time, woven into a seamless, beautiful whole. At the core of the sound are the band's sometimes sweet, sometimes rough-hewn three-part harmony vocals and a piano-ukulele-bass-and-drums rhythm section that swings along in a variety of textures.

Saturday Night Dance With Maraca

Nominated for"Best Salsa Album of the year" for 2003, winner of many awards in Cuba, at Cubadisco and in EGREM voted "Best Fusion Album" both in 1999 and 2001. He was also voted for "Best Latin Jazz album" in 1995, and "Best Recording" in 2003. The Cuban flutist, composer and director of the group Orlando Valle Maraca is definitely a spectacle to see live, as he directs his highly talented 12-member group. Maraca, musician and director, was named a "visionary" by "Chicago Tribune en Espanol" 2003, and is considered one of the most popular names in Latin and Afro-Cuban Music, from salsa to Latin jazz. His music is a cocktail of fusion and energy that stems from the most jazziest improvisations to the most danceable elements of Caribbean and popular Cuban music.

Maraca has traveled extensively and with tremendous success with his groups, "Maraca y Otra Vision" as well as "Maraca & Afro-Cuban Jazz Masters" to more than 35 countries all over the world, which include almost the entire European continent and the United States, where he tours extensively throughout the year and has been doing so, since 1996. He has also toured to Canada, Africa, Cuba, Santa Lucia, Martinique, Colombia, Costa Rica and Brazil. Their high level of energy on stage, Maracas? sense of creating a spectacle, the way he communicates and blends with all the different variety of audiences, the musicality and variety of genres in his repertoire are all celebrated and applauded by the most demanding critics nation wide which contribute to the fame of this very creative artist, and to the unique characteristic of his group.