Summer Concert Series: Orquesta Afinke

Join us for salsa from Bridgeport featuring Orquesta Afinke! This concert will take place on the beautiful CMCH lawn. Grounds are open for seating and picnicking from 5 PM, and music is from 6PM-7:30PM. All of the CMCH outdoor concerts are free and open to the public. Visitors are encouraged to bring their own lawn chairs and food, and Samba’s Cuisine food truck will be available onsite. In case of rain, the concerts will move indoors to our auditorium. All our summer concerts will be livestreamed to our YouTube Channel.

About the Band
Bridgeport band Orquesta Afinke was founded as a way to entertain as well as educate about Latin American music and cultures. Afinque is Spanish slang, meaning that the group playing together has tight rhythms—they have it together. The band was founded by trombonist Tito Planas and percussionist Samuel Diaz, Jr., who both grew up in local Puerto Rican music traditions, and are also committed music educators. All the band members are Puerto Rican musicians from Bridgeport, and the group was founded in 2009 out of an opportunity to serve the local community.

“If you listen to the music and rhythms, it really talks about the island, the history,” says Diaz, and this is what he and the other members of the band make clear. They perform to entertain as well as teach about the cultural roots of the music, which includes salsa, merengue, plena, bolero, cumbia, and Latin jazz, as well as the cultural histories of the instruments they play. All the musicians are seasoned professionals, and have played alongside famous salsa artists such as Frankie Negron, Tony Vega, Choco Orta, Charlie Cruz, Kevin Ceballo, Raulin Rosendo, and Los Hermanos Moreno.

Our Summer Concert Series is funded through the support of the Evelyn W. Preston Memorial Fund, Bank of America, N.A., Trustee; the Connecticut Office of the Arts/DECD; and the National Endowment for the Arts.