706 Music founder and partner Dr. Jessica Valiente is herself an active performing musician.  A conservatory-trained classical musician, she began to expand into jazz improvisation and studies of traditional musics from all over the world about 10 years into her classical performance career.  Her musical interests reflect her family's mosaic heritage, including African American traditional and popular styles, music of the Spanish-speaking Caribbean, and indigenous music of both North and South America.  She specializes in Afro-Cuban and other Latin styles, Brazilian choro, straight-ahead jazz and performs on traditional Native American style courtship flutes and the Andean quena as a soloist.

Dr. Valiente holds a BA in music from Barnard College in conjunction with Manhattan School of Music, an MA in music performance from Queens College and a DMA in flute performance from the CUNY Graduate Center.  She is a 2014-2015 recipient of the American Association of University Women (AAUW) American Dissertation Fellowship for her dissertation on the Cuban charanga in New York from 1960-2000.  

Dr. Valiente has performed in numerous classical, jazz, experimental and Latin groups, and was formerly a member of the salsa and mambo orchestra of Orlando Marín and the Afro-Dominican folkloric group, Pa'lo Monte, lead by Osvaldo Sanchez. She has also distinguished herself as a leader, formerly leading the classical chamber groups Non Sequitur (flute, violin, cello) and the Harbor Wind Quintet, and the all-female jazz group, Nosotras. She performed with the bilingual Italian/English commedia dell'arte troupe, I Giulari di Piazza, and has performed on numerous occasions with the critically-acclaimed bilingual Spanish/English Teatro Pregones.  Today Dr. Valiente is known mostly as the musical director of Los Más Valientes, the salsa and Latin jazz ensemble that she has been leading since 1995.  Together she and her band have produced and released three CD’s on the Laughing Buddha label, and one on 706 Music's own record label, all of which have received wide critical acclaim. She has had a long career as a private teacher, and has taught music at Brooklyn College, John Jay College, Baruch College, University of Bridgeport, New School University, Mercy College, and the John J. Cali School of Music of Montclair State University.

Watch Jessica Valiente on video!

"Summerland"  Sultry musical poem by William Grant Still, arranged for flute and piano by the composer himself.

"Tres Estrelinhas" Rhapsodic solo interpretation of this very early Brazilian choro by Anacleto de Madeiros

"Pent-Up House" Sonny Rollins's burning jazz standard, with fellow 706 Music artists Cary Brown on piano and Rick Faulkner on bass

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