Latin Jazz Spotlight: The Echo Park Project – Latin Jazz Octet – It’s My Turn

“In our sixth production, the focus was to encourage creativity and originality in keeping the swing and salsa dancing style of the music that we love to perform, but this time in a instrumental format. These tunes are for listeners and dancers alike.”

Born in 1962, Carlo Lopez is a native New Yorker and self-taught percussionist. He is the younger of two musicians in the family who’s played Latin music for most of his life. As a teen growing up around the 70’s New York salsa scene, he found himself surrounded with musicians and the sounds that were integral in shaping the eras of the 50’s and 70’s. It was a great time to be a teen in Brooklyn, NY. He learned from the Latin scenes old school veterans and was part of the emerging new crop of musicians destined to make a mark in the vast landscape of the salsa/Latin music scene no matter where he resided.

In 1992, he moved to the west coast and landed in Los Angeles, CA.
He integrated by playing percussion in local bands. He arrived in L.A.
at a time when technology enjoyed a boom in independent audio recording. Carlo, determined to study his way to independence in the independent recording artist arena, mastered working with the latest studio software. Carlo’s testament to that side of audio engineering gave birth to the Echo Park Project’s independent recordings.

Carlo and the EPP have backed traveling salsa super stars Adalberto Santiago, Cano Estremera, Tony Vega, Choco Orta, Herman Olivera, Frankie Vazquez, Cita Rodriguez, and The New Swing Sextet. Having brought the New York salsa sound to the West Coast, Carlo started The Echo Park Project in 2006. Since then, the Echo Park Project has issued five albums. As director of the band, Carlo infused their music with the legendary sounds near to his heart with a modern twist. Carlo, now a trained sound and recording engineer, has produced and engineered local band recordings adding to his resume.