"A potent mix of Latin American folk music and jazz"

- Jesse Hamlin, SF Chronicle

"Using various methods of artistic expression, Quijeremá is more than just a band. They are poets and multi-media designers.
Combining sounds from almost all over Latin America, their music contains a multi-cultural vibe that is guaranteed to impress anyone."

- SFReMezcla

Quijerema is a fine-tuned Oakland (SF Bay Area) based performing arts ensemble that is recreating the concept of mixtura in World Music.

Quijeremá infuses their original contemporary Latin American compositions with a deep sense of unique ancient musical traditions. New with primal, the real and ethereal permeate each performance—an amalgam of Quijeremá’s mastery of traditional music and the present. Still, the blending of rhythm, texture, and color in their music is seamless, transparent and one-of-a-kind. Captivating audiences over the course of a eight-year, five-album career; this fine-tuned San Francisco Bay Area based quintet of world musicians has only gotten better.

For the 2011 touring season, Quijeremá has created an all-new exciting repertoire featuring the venezuelan bandola llanera. Compelling new stories told from the stage between songs, and an overall presentation wins the hearts of both latin american music aficionados and newcomers to their sound. Their power keeps audiences engaged with the best of roots music and the surprises of a hard-hitting touch.

With these enticing New-Latinoamericana grooves Quijeremá has been able to break cultural barriers in their concerts. The ensemble has performed throughout the US, Canada and Latin America, including collaborations with a variety of distinguished international musicians such as John Santos, Anthony Blea, Manuel Moreno, Mads Tolling, as well as members of renowned Chilean groups: Congreso, Illapu, The Latin American Sax Quartet, La Pedro Band, Entrama, and Santiago del Nuevo Extremo. In 2006 they were invited to Venezuela to perform as part of the Fiesta de la Diversidad Cultural music festival. In 2007 they were invited to inaugurate the memorial amphitheater Parque por la Paz Villa Grimaldi, and toured in Santiago, Chile.

As writer Willy Lizarraga states, Quijeremá “...manages to render a whole constellation of South American rhythms into a jazz idiom... how the cueca from Chile, tango from Argentina, waltz at its most Latin, landó from Peru, joropo from Venezuela, huaino from the Andes fuse into a musical continuum whose identity, no matter how jazzy, always remains rooted in the deep South, not of the U.S. but of the Americas.”

Members of the ensemble play over thirty instruments, and have performed worldwide and appeared on regional, national and international radio and television.

Founded in 2002, Quijeremá is:

Quique Cruz (Chile: strings, Andean wind instruments & percussion)
Jeremy Allen (USA: bass & percussion)
Maria Fernanda Acuña (Venezuela: percussion & venezuelan cuatro)
Henry Hung (USA: trumpet, flugal horn, percussion)
John Calloway (USA: piano, flute & percussion)
 
Quijeremá performs in theaters, festivals, museums, cultural centers and corporate events. They also perform and conduct workshops for schools, libraries and other educational institutions. In addition to performance, Quijeremá specializes in scoring music for film.