Latin Jazz Pianist-Composer Eddie Palmieri, 1936–2025 By Frank AlkyeAug. 12, 2025 “I don’t guess I’m going to excite you; I know I’m going to excite you,” Palmieri said in an August 1994 DownBeat feature. Famed Latin jazz composer, bandleader and pianist Eddie Palmieri passed away in his New Jersey home on Aug. 6. He was 88. A product of the Spanish Harlem neighborhood in New York City, where he was born, and the Bronx, where he grew up, Palmieri brought the joy, complexity, grit and love of the music he heard around him as well as the sounds his parents...