To honor the closing of the exhibition Luis Cruz Azaceta: What a Wonderful World, VicJcom will perform contemporary Cuban music at Ogden Museum of Southern Art on Thursday, July 21, from 6 to 8 p.m. Presented in collaboration with CubaNOLA Arts Collective, this musical performance is a ticketed event. Admission is free for Ogden Museum members but advanced registration is requested.⁣

VicJcom is a young jazz piano player hailing from Camagüey, Cuba. His compelling style combines virtuosity, whimsy, charisma and technical prowess. He started playing piano at age five and went on to train at Cuba’s National School of the Arts. He has played across the US and internationally. VicJcom first visited New Orleans in 2012 as part of an exchange program with the Louis Armstrong Summer Jazz Camp. That visit made a profound impact and in 2019 the young pianist decided to move to New Orleans. He has been feverishly studying every form of New Orleans music ever since and incorporating this wide range into his unique musical language. In a 2019 interview, legendary Cuban musician Chucho Valdés predicted that VicJcom will revolutionize Cuban jazz piano.⁣

Luis Cruz Azaceta: What a Wonderful World brings together painting, drawing, collage and sculptural works spanning over four decades to illustrate the prolific career of Luis Cruz Azaceta, a Cuban American visual artist based in New Orleans. Often working in large scale, his artworks are known for their highly-charged color and narrative

For more than fifty years, Azaceta has created art, not for art’s sake, but to confront the most pressing issues of his time. Moving deftly between raw figurative expressionism and narrative abstraction, Azaceta conveys his own anxiety and fear about the state of the world through his paintings and sculptures. By bringing attention to current critical issues—violence, war, racism, environmental collapse, natural disasters, tyranny, oppression, pandemic—Azaceta confronts harsh realities with the pictorial force of his work, tempered with his own brand of compassion and self-awareness. He views his work as his voice, and also as a weapon for change.

Additionally, the summer celebration on July 23 will recognize the Ogden Museum’s current photo exhibition A Summer’s Prayer, and will include a book signing by David Rae Morris, author of Love, Daddy: Letters from My Father.

5 – 6 p.m. – David Rae Morris book signing

6 – 8 p.m. – A Night of Contemporary Cuban Music with VicJcom presented in partnership with CubaNOLA Arts Collective (Ticket required)

6 – 8 p.m. – Open Gallery with Richard McCabe, Curator of Photography, and photographers featured in A Summer’s Prayer (Free with concert)

For more information, visit here.