Unlike most musicians, thirty-three-year-old Dafnis Prieto practices the axiom “early to bed, early to rise, makes a [musician] healthy, wealthy, and wise.” While he may still be working on the “wealthy” part, Dafnis Prieto certainly adheres to the spirit of founding father Ben Franklin’s advice, and in eight rather short years has created a career rife with possibilities.
Far from the jazz stereotype of the scuffling musician prowling New York’s late-night clubs, only to return to his bed at dawn, Dafnis Prieto typically turns in early so that the deep musical concepts filling his fertile mind will have full release come the new day. Dafnis wastes not a moment, as anyone who has witnessed him speaking or singing melodic and rhythmic ideas into his ubiquitous MP3 recorder can attest.
When not touring the world with Santo Domingan pianist extraordinaire Michel Camilo or with one of his own groups, Dafnis typically rises at 7:30 A.M., hits the streets of his Washington Heights, New York neighborhood to retrieve his family’s chocolate, hummus, and toast breakfast from a local bodega, then gets down to work. After some stretching and a light yoga routine, Dafnis might work out Stick Control variations on a pad, revisit the previous day’s composition-in-progress on an upright piano, and then, after they’ve woken up, he’ll touch base with his family of musicians stretching across the globe.
Somehow finding time to write and record three albums as a leader since 2003, Dafnis has also composed entire suites for various commissions, performed and recorded as a sideman with musicians as diverse as Henry Threadgill, Bebo de Cuba, and The Caribbean Jazz Project, supported his wife’s modern dance troupe, and recorded and toured with Michel Camilo’s Trio, the gig that helped launch the careers of such greats as Dave Weckl, Horacio “El Negro” Hernandez, Cliff Almond, Joel Rosenblatt, and Zach Danziger.
As if that weren’t enough, when he’s not on the road, Dafnis also teaches ensembles and private students at Manhattan’s New York University. No doubt, it’s a full plate for this diminutive human dynamo.
Dafnis’s exceptional energy, fire, and ambition can be heard on his Sextet’s brilliant new album, Taking The Soul For A Walk. As with the title of his first album, About The Monks, Prieto’s latest grabs your attention even before you play it. Dafnis is a thinker, a drummer/philosopher, a musician as interested in modern dance and Béla Bart
