Grupo Los Santos Bios

Pete Smith is a New York City-based guitarist who performs in a wide range of musical settings. As a founding member of Grupo los Santos, he has played New York’s Town Hall and concerts throughout the U.S. and in Cuba. For the last 10 years he has been a member of bassist Phil Bowler’s band Pocket Jungle, performing at the New Haven and Hartford jazz festivals, among other area venues. He has worked with Norah Jones, trumpeter Donald Byrd, Cuban trombone master Juan Pablo Torres, Andrew Hill, Steve Davis, Bill Charlap, Ingrid Lucia & the Flying Neutrinos, Vince Giordano & the Nighthawks, the Moonlighters and Madeline Peyroux. Pete’s recording credits include Juan Pablo Torres’s BMG release Together Again, featuring Arturro Sandoval and Chucho Valdes (Feb 2001), NYC pianist Kerry Pollitzers Yearning on CAP Records (Feb 2001), Todd Londagin’s Introducing Todd Londagin on Artists Only! Records (Apr 2003), Paul Carlon’s Looking Up (Oct 1999), and Grupo los Santos’s Noches En El Taller (Aug. 2000) and Cruzando el Mar (Jul 2003). Two film credits are both with Grupo los Santos: Cómo se forma una rumba/How to Create a Rumba by Ivan Acosta (Cuba/USA, 2001, video; 73m), which was shown at the Walter Reade Theater in Lincoln Center as part of Latin Beat 2001 and Latido Latino, a documentary about Latin music in New York City broadcast on Spanish television.

David Ambrosio, originally from the New York area, has lived in New York City since 1988. As one of the prominent bassists in the New York jazz scene for over 10 years, he can be seen performing regularly in the many Jazz clubs and performance venues in and around the New York City area. In addition, David has extensively toured the United States, Canada, Europe, and Asia as a performer and clinician. In March of 2007 he was chosen for Jazz at Lincoln Center's The Rhythm Road: American Music Abroad Program as a member of Adam Klipple's Drive-by Leslie for an extensive tour of concerts and master classes in South East Asia.

Over the years David has played with many great Jazz musicians such as pianist Kenny Werner, legendary vibraphone\clarinet duo Terry Gibbs and Buddy DrFranco, Mat Maneri, George Garzone, Ralph Alessi, Joseph Jarmon, Donny McCaslin, Brad Shepik, and Matt Darriau. He has also toured and recorded with many NYC-based bands including George Schuller's Circle Wide, the Deanna Witkowski Quartet, the Matt Renzi Trio, the Eri Yamamoto Trio, Grupo Lo Santos, Eric Rasmussen's School of Tristano, the Frank Colon Quintet, 4inObjects, Peck Allmond's Kalimba Kollective , Rob Garcia's Sangha , the Paul Carlon Octet, Christophe Schweitzer's 5 SIX 7 , Mike McGinnis's Between Green and the Schumacher/Sanford Sound Assembly . For the past four years David has been a member of the BMI/ New York Jazz Orchestra led by Jim McNeely and Michael Abene.

Over the last few years some of the prominent festivals David has performed at include the Tel Aviv Jazz festival, Java Jazz festival, Cheltenham Jazz festival, Rochester International Jazz festival, Canada's Montreal and Guelph festivals, JVC Jazz and Vision festivals in New York City and the Nancy Pulsations festival in France. He has recorded for the Fresh Sound, Thirsty Ear, Playscape, Tone of a Pitch, RKM, Musiques Suisses and Artist Share labels.

David's desire to broaden his musical palate along with his commitment to continually learn about music has given him quite a diversified musical personality. In his pre-college years, having already played piano, guitar and electric bass, he became interested in Composition. After studying for two years, he attended the Hart School of Music in Connecticut to study classical composition for one year before moving to New York City to finish his degree. Living amidst the vital jazz and improvisational music scene that is New York City, David naturally became interested in Jazz and then, after studying jazz piano for a year, found the acoustic bass. Some of the teachers that have influenced him the most are David Noon, Linda McKnight, Ron McClure, Sir Roland Hanna and John Goldsby. While continuing to develop as an improvising musician he became interested in Brazilian and Afro Cuban music. Then in 2001 David had the opportunity to visit Cuba to perform with Grupo Los Santos, as well as to work with Cuban folkloric music and dance ensembles. After being so inspired and affected by the music he heard at the Teatro Bertol Brecht in Havana during the two day Cuba Tambor festival, David started playing the Afro Cuban Bata drums. He has continued his studies for the past five years with his current Bata teacher and mentor Carlos Gomez, master hand drummer and babalawo.

David is currently on faculty at the Queens College CPSM department and was among the first clinicians to work for the Colden Center's City High School Jazz Residency Program, now known as the Kupferberg Performance Center. He is also been a faculty member at the Maine Jazz Camp for many years. David has a Bachelor of Arts from Manhattan School of Music in Classical Composition and a Master of Arts in Jazz Performance from Queens College.

Drummer/Composer/Educator William "Beaver" Bausch is a founding member of Grupo Los Santos, a quartet of New York City jazz musicians playing the music of Cuba and Brazil. Their first CD release, Noches en el Taller [Nights in the Workshop] features several of Beaver's compositions and arrangements, including two solo drum pieces based upon the folkloric music of Cuban Santeria. The recording was the culmination of over two years of weekly performances, "work shopping" to develop a unique sound and approach to the rhythms of rumba and samba.

Beaver's path as a drummer has been shaped by a wide variety of forces: jazz studies with the late Allan Dawson; performances with master trumpeter Donald Byrd; bassist Phil Bowler; the late guitar legend Sal Salvador; Cuban trombone master Juan Pablo Torres; Cuban musical studies with batá master Carlos Aldama and drummers Enrique Plá (Irakere) and Jose Luis Quintana (Changuito); samba and candomble studies with Jorge Alabe; and cooperative projects such as "Rumba Tap" with Max Pollak and los Muñequitos' Barbaro Ramos. He has recorded with renowned bassist Harvie S (the artist formerly known as Swartz), Ben Lapidus & Sonido Isleño, and flutist Koari Fujii, among others. He has performed in Russia, Cuba, Austria, and Japan... so far.

As an educator, Bausch has taught in the New York City public schools since 1990, as well as at Queens College/Aaron Copeland School of Music and Columbia University/Teachers College. From 1994-2003, he designed and implemented a percussion program at the Choir Academy of Harlem, home of the renown Boys Choir of Harlem. He's since migrated north . . . to the South Bronx. He holds a Bachelor’s degree from Oberlin College, and Master's degrees from Queens College and Hunter College.

Saxophonist and composer Paul Carlon grew up in Fenner, NY, graduated from Cornell University in 1991 with a B.A. in English Literature, and moved to New York City to pursue a career in music. Since then he has traveled and performed all over New York, the Northeast, and New England, as well as
touring the western U.S. and the Caribbean. He has worked with artists such as the Jason Lindner Big Band, Phil Bowler and Pocket Jungle, the Brazilian group Katende, and Cuban star Juan Pablo Torres, as well as fronting his own group, the Paul Carlon Quartet. Paul was one of the original regulars at underground jazz mecca Small’s, and has also played at the Zinc Bar, Sweet Basil and S.O.B’s. Paul’s festival performances include the 1997 JVC Jazz Festival in NYC, the 1998 Norwalk, CT. Jazz Feast, and the Greater Hartford
Festival of Jazz in 1995, 1998, 2000 and 2001. In 1999 Paul toured and recorded with Torres, including an appearance at a sold-out concert of Afro-Cuban all-stars at Town Hall in NYC. In 2000, he recorded a second CD with Torres, Together Again, on the German Connector label, alongside such stars of Latin jazz as Arturo Sandoval, Chucho Valdes, Giovanni Hidalgo, and Steve Turre. Together Again was released in February of 2001. Paul’s quartet has been performing to wildly enthusiastic crowds this year in venues such
as Detour in NYC, the Hudson Opera House and FourthDown Block Party in Hudson, NY, and, in conjunction with the Central New York Jazz Arts Foundation, the Carousel Center Skydeck in Syracuse, NY.

Paul also leads his own band on his first solo CD, Looking Up, featuring all-original compositions mixing straight-ahead Jazz, Afro-Cuban, and Funk. Paul’s love of melody shines through on such songs as
“Ultraviolet in Db”, “The In-Betweens”, and the ballad “Soul Soliloquy”, which found a fan in filmmaker Kern Konwiser. Kern used the song in the soundtrack to his acclaimed documentary about street basketball in New York City, On Hallowed Ground, originally aired on May 6, 2000 on the TNT Network. Paul displays his interest in Afro-Cuban music on Looking Up in tunes like “Frank’s Fate”, a mambo-ish blues, and in the increasingly popular “Weird Latin”. The debut CD of this up and coming artist showcases
the importance of soul, groove, and a melody you can go away singing.

“Paul is clearly figuring out an original style.” -- Peter Watrous, The
New York Times

“Paul Carlon is a rare young saxophonist.” -- Owen McNally, The Hartford
Courant

“Music, in the most pure sense of the word.” -- Juan A. Moreno-Velazquez,
El Diario/LA PRENSA

back to the top