Today’s crop of young artists are creating music in a very different world than the one occupied by an older generation. The popular music that surrounds them often lowers the bar in terms of musicality, and many people from their generation simply don’t value artistry at a high level. They buck the popular consensus though and learn about music in a much different fashion than their elders, spending years piling through musical details at colleges and universities. The schoolroom presents a number of different lessons than the bandstand, and their studies stock them with an academic and advanced toolbox. As a result, their musical output looks and sounds much different than their elders, building upon modern conceptions of harmony, melody, and rhythm. Armed with this musical knowledge, they then need to find a place for their music in a world that often simply doesn’t understand it and in many cases doesn’t want it. It’s an uphill battle for young jazz musicians, who find themselves dealing with a challenging set of issues in today’s music world.
Pianist Zaccai Curtis has forged a strong artistic presence on the modern New York Latin Jazz scene, juggling the challenges of the day to build an impressive career. Immersed in music as a child, Zaccai and his brothers Damien and Luques soon became connected to a variety of different musical styles. The brothers all channeled their interests through classical piano and percussion, inspiring each other to push their musicianship forward. The brothers attended saxophonist Jackie McLean’s Artist’s Collective in Hartford, a local school that provided rich jazz experiences for young people, supplying them with private lessons, big band performance, and more. At the same time, pianist Joe Velez led the brothers in a Latin Jazz ensemble that got them hooked on the music in a big way. The Latin Jazz program soon folded, but the Curtis family kept it going through rehearsals in their basement. As the Curtis Brothers and their group began to grow, the played extensively around Hartford, and then a chance encounter with legendary pianist Chucho Valdes resulted in a trip to Cuba. With his future soundly set upon music, Zaccai headed to Boston, leaping into the New England Conservatory’s jazz studies program. He spent several years at the conservatory, working closely with pianist Danilo Pérez to define his own voice in the music. He played consistently throughout Boston’s music scene and continued at the conservatory for graduate work in music. Armed with years of performance experience, a thoroughly studied background, and a diverse appreciation for many styles, Zaccai and his brother Luques packed their bags and moved to New York, determined to build a career in the center of the jazz world.
Zaccai Curtis has spent years learning the ropes of the modern musical world, letting his passion for performance push him forward. His strong musical vision and perceptive insight into the world has helped him carve a place for him in the modern scene. In Part One of our interview with Curtis, we looked at his musical upbringing, his time at the Artist Collective, his performances in Cuba, and more. Today we talk with Curtis about the Hartford music scene, his studies at the New England Conservatory, the move to New York, and more.
———- LATIN JAZZ CORNER: What is the scene like in Hartford in terms of live jazz and Latin Jazz?
ZACCAI CURTIS: Hartford is actually great. I was there recently with Kristen Anderson and Desmond Douglas. They were having the Monday night jazz series. It starts after the festival is over, so all the people from the festival come over to the club. We were playing at a restaurant called Black Eyed Sally’s. It’s just a great time.
There’s a really strong jazz community, really strong. I was talking to Nat Reeves about this, and he was saying, “It’s just so amazing - a lot of jazz fan clubs have just been dying off, and it seems like Hartford’s club is getting stronger.” It really is. It sounds like it’s exaggerating, but it’s not. It’s really strange; Hartford is really picking up as far as jazz. There are less jazz venues, so that’s something that might change with Hartford in the near future. Every time the Curtis Brothers go out to Hartford, we pretty much pack the house or get close to that. There’s a lot of people that love it over there. I’ve been trying to tell more and more people that they should definitely try to book in Hartford, becuase it’s a great place for jazz right now..
LJC: You went to New England Conservatory for college; what were you studying there?
ZC: I went for jazz performance. I did my undergrad and grad work at New England Conservatory. I did both programs, I was there for too long!
LJC: What was the scene like there?
ZC: It was cool. I was studying with Danilo Pérez. I was really happy to be studying with him, that’s the reason why I went. When I heard his music, I knew that was the person that I wanted to study with. I never really had a jazz piano teacher before him. I had piano teachers; I don’t want to disrespect any of my piano teachers. But I never had a teacher that taught me quite like he did. So I definitely pay my respects to Danilo Pérez. I’m glad I went there, it was school though. And then afterwards it was expensive . . .
LJC: Were you gigging around Boston at the time?
ZC: Yea, all around Boston since the beggining.
LJC: Your generation really got trained in school where older musicians got trained exclusively on the bandstand. What do you think are the benefits or downfalls of a jazz musician getting that training in school?
ZC: It’s hard to teach somebody jazz. Jazz is a hands-on experience. A real jazz school would be everyday you come together and you play music with different people. Then people ridicule you, some people don’t, and you learn other people’s music. That would be a lot like playing on the scene today. But that’s not what happens in jazz school.
In a way, you pay so much money to go do something that they’ve been trying to figure out how to teach. They put together a whole curriculum on how to teach and it doesn’t really work. I don’t know, in a way, that’s why some of the older musicians are so incredible. Musicians like McCoy Tyner . . . they went to school, I don’t mean to say that school is bad - school is great. I do think the idea of how jazz school is dealt with is not necessarily helpful to the majority of jazz musicians.
I’m not bashing the schools, but there is something about spending $40,000 on a school each year. Then getting out with over $100,000 in debt that you have to pay back over $500 a month. I’ve talked to so many kids that are in this position, including myself. A great gig is paying a hundred bucks. You’re trying to make around $1,000 a month just so you can pay rent and pay your loans. It is a situation that needs to be talked about and needs to be dealt with. I do think that because of that, it’s easy to track it back and say - is this good? Is this good for a musician? Is this good for jazz? Is this good for anything? You find out that it’s really not. That’s how they deal with other school, which is fine. Because when you get out of school - except for now because it’s a different time - but usually, you get out of school and you have a job or something waiting for you in your field. In jazz, the thing that is waiting for you does not cover what you spent. The older musicians did not have that at all. Even if they went to school, they got out and they weren’t spending that amount of money. They didn’t have to make back that money, unless they got into debt with something else. You don’t come out of school with more than $100,000 in debt - that’s just insane. So, yea, I’m a little bit bitter about that.
The older musicians didn’t go to school and yet they’re so incredible. What happened there? What is the situation? They were spending so much more time on their instrument than we are. I’m here trying to do anything that I can to make money, but they had gigs. I talked to so many great musicians and they would tell me that they never even heard of door gigs; that was not even something that came up. What happened was - and this is something that they should teach you in school, but they don’t - a lot of the clubs would deal drugs, so they always had their money. The club didn’t have to worry about not making money, they always had their money. Then they payed the musicians a flat fee. The musicians would have five gigs a day sometimes, and it would be continuous throughout the night. You would be getting calls for gigs that start at three in the morning. They would do consistent gigs every day, so they were on their instruments consistently. That’s why these musicians that never went to school survived. You talk to some of them, and they say, “Yea, I don’t know how to read.” But they’re so amazing. They do it all the time, that’s what they did. It’s a different time now though.
I don’t bash school. I always say to my students, “If you’re going to go to college, just make sure that you’re not taking out loans. If you are taking out loans, make sure that you’re prepared for what is to come.” I always have that conversation with all of my students that are about to go to college. I say, “If your parents have the money, go! You’re going to have fun. If your parents don’t have the money and they have to take our all four years of loans, do not go. Go to a community college that you’re going to pay $10,000 a year for. Do not go to one of the larger colleges.” That’s just my advice, because it’s something that is not taught. My parents, like so many parents their age, have the idea that there’s no price tag on education. So they’ll do whatever they can to get the “best education there is.”
LJC: When did you make the move to New York and how was the transition for you?
ZC: I went to New York in 2005. I came here from Boston. I was in Boston for six years. I really wasn’t happy at all there as far as music. Maybe it was just me, but I really wasn’t happy. I’m pretty adventurous and I wanted to go. I knew New York was the next move. I talked to my brother and he was definitely down; he wanted to go. A lot of people don’t want you to go, but that’s because they’re not going! It’s amazing, once we got here, we loved it right away.
There’s good and bad things about moving to New York. It seems like everything is more expensive. We’re out here in Jersey now. We just moved to Jersey a few months ago. We’re closer to Times Square than we’ve ever been. We’re about twelve minutes from Times Square through the Lincoln Tunnel. We’re just right outside the city. It’s so much cheaper, there’s so much more room in our apartment more than ever before.
The good thing is the connections you make, you really can’t make them if you’re not in New York. People don’t even think about it. They want to know if they can rehearse with you. If you play with a musician, if you don’t live in New York, they know that they can’t rehearse with you, which means that you probably won’t be able to play in their band. But if you live in New York, you tell them, “Hey, I just moved to New York, and I know all your music.” They’re going to know that they can rehearse with you and they’re going to be way more interested in working with you. So that is important, to actually move to New York for a musician that wants to work with another musician that’s in New York. That was very important for us to do.
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Make sure that you check out Part One of our interview with pianist Zaccai Curtis. We take a look at Curtis’ vast exposure to music as a child, his time at saxophonist Jackie McLean’s Artist’s Collective, his trips to Cuba, and more. You can find it HERE.
Come back tomorrow for Part 3 of our interview with pianist Zaccai Curtis where we look at his early gigs in New York, his role as a band leader, the recording of A Genesis, and much more. Don’t miss it!
———- WEST COAST LATIN JAZZ FANS - CHECK OUT THE CURTIS BROTHERS THIS WEEK!
The Curtis Brothers Quartet will be making their first West Coast appearance this week, performing throughout the Bay Area. Don’t miss this opportunity to hear cutting edge music performed by the next generation of Latin Jazz greats. Come out for the music, bring your friends, and spread the word about his amazing group. Show your support for this amazing group making a rare appearance!
CURTIS BROTHERS WHEN: Thursday 7/29/10 WHERE:Kuumbwa Jazz Center
320-2 Cedar Street
Santa Cruz, CA TIME: 7:00 p.m. TICKETS: $12 in advance; $15 at the door; $24.60 with dinner
WHEN: Friday 7/30/10 WHERE:Sonoma Jazz At The Bistro
420 First Street East
Sonoma, CA TIME: 7:00 p.m. TICKETS: NO COVER
WHEN: Saturday 7/31/10 WHERE:West End Studio Theatre
1554 4th Street
San Rafael, CA TIME: 8:00 p.m. TICKETS: $25
WHEN: Wednesday 8/4/10 WHERE:CODA
1710 Mission Street
San Francisco, CA TIME: 7:00 p.m. TICKETS:$7
WHEN: Thursday 8/5/10 WHERE:Stamford Shopping Center
180 El Camino Real
Palo Alto, CA TIME: 6:00 p.m. TICKETS:FREE
A childhood immersed in great musical experiences sets the stage for the emergence of a great musician. Listening can be a powerful way to peek interest in a young person, and the more time they spend hearing music, the more it will resonate with them. The more interested a child becomes, the more likely that they will find their way to an instrument. They need large amounts of encouragement and opportunity at this point, but once they have it, they will work hard to master the details of their chose instrument. Performing with an ensemble exposes the child to the social aspect of music and gives them an idea of the rush of live music; this will only serve to encourage them more. Involvement with jazz allows a young person to express their own identity, helping them define themselves in an often confusing part of life. Each stop along the way digs a young person deeper into budding artistic conviction and opens the door to an involved musical lifestyle.
Pianist Zaccai Curtis spent his childhood saturated with high quality music both as a listener and performer, setting the stage for a creative career on New York’s jazz scene. Growing up among two brothers, Damien and Luques, Zaccai heard music constantly in his house, due to his father’s love for all kinds of music. The wide exposure had a profound effect upon the three brothers, and eventually they all dived into classical piano lessons. Their father held an affinity for the sound of congas, leading him to also connect all his sons with a percussion teacher and Latin music. As the brothers grew more involved in their music studies, they became regular students at Hartford’s Artist’s Collective, a local jazz school founded by saxophone legend Jackie McLean. The Curtis brothers took full advantage of the many opportunities at The Artist’s Collective, playing in ensembles and studying privately with some of the area’s top musicians. At the same time, they became involved in a local Latin Jazz program, run by pianist Joe Velez. The ensemble lit a fire with the Curtis Brothers and exposed them to classic compositions from Mongo Santamaria, Tito Puente, and more. The program unfortunately folded at the height of the brothers’ involvement, inspiring their parents to continue the group in their basement. With the help of local percussionist Ed Fast, the group practiced weekly and evolved into a performing unit called Latin Flavor. The band gave the brothers invaluable performance experience and placed them on Hartford’s jazz scene at a very young age. During this time, Cuban pianist Chucho Valdes heard the group; they impressed him enough to earn an invitation to the Havana Jazz Festival. Still in their teens, the Curtis Brothers had heard a diverse array of music, connected with influential professionals, and performed worldwide; a full-time career was an inevitable part of their future.
Zaccai and his brother Luques would continue their focus upon jazz, moving to New York and becoming entrenched in the straight ahead jazz and Latin Jazz worlds. As a pianist Zaccai would perform with artists such as Papo Vazquez, Waitiki 7, and Brian Lynch; as band leaders, he and Luques would form Insight and The Curtis Brothers Quartet. In Part One of our interview with Zaccai Curtis, we look back upon his musical upbringing, discussing his broad exposure, his time at The Artist’s Collective, Latin Flavor, and more.
———- LATIN JAZZ CORNER: You grew up with your brothers Luques and Damien all playing music, you must have had a musical childhood. What was it like growing up in that environment?
ZACCAI CURTIS: There was a lot of music happening in the house - a lot. Even before we really played music. My dad was a big fan of music in general. I still remember, everywhere we went, there was music playing or we went to concerts. My dad was always a fan of jazz and r ‘n b, funk, or whatever it was. It kind of morphed into the salsa world at one point - salsa and Latin Jazz. He didn’t really have any borders with the music, so it wasn’t that he liked either salsa or Latin Jazz. I think I remember him saying that he liked music with congas in it. So in the type of music that he listened to, usually it had some type of congas. Groups like Santana or Mandrill. He was always playing that type of music in the house, some sort of music with congas in it all the time. All of us kind of grew up with all that music. Including classical too - he wanted us to listen to everything. So he’d put on classical music in the morning or something with more sentimental type vibes. All this was before we even got into playing music.
Then when we got into playing music, we started off classical. All of us started classical piano. My older brother Damien was first and then I gravitated towards the piano because he was playing it. After that, I started with classical music and so did Luques. Luques did classical piano as well. Shortly after that, there was a percussion teacher in town. My dad got a hold of him and said, “Hey, I would love for you to teach my sons congas.” That was our first introduction to Latin music. I still remember that whole introduction into Latin music, playing congas and eventually timbales. I started drumming, it was very musical. My father got us into anything that we gravitated towards and just pushed us in that direction. That was the beginning of music for us. Before us, there was no one in our family that played though.
LJC: Your percussion background must have really been an asset in playing Latin music, was that something that you wanted to do at the time?
ZC: I wanted to play - we all wanted to play. In fact, Luques was a conga player before he was a bass player - he was the conga player for our band. It would be my older brother Damien on piano, Luques played congas, and then I would play horn parts on the piano. I would say I liked it the least; but I still enjoyed it. They were really into it. As time went on, things got more defined as far as what we were doing. We started having jazz lessons, and things kind of came together.
We went to a school called the Artist’s Collective - it’s a school that Jackie McLean started. The Artist’s Collective was where a lot of us really started playing jazz. That’s where I started playing jazz as well as Damien and Luques. We all took lessons. We were with the Artist’s Collective since we were maybe nine until after high school. We were with the Artist’s Collective for our whole schooling of jazz until we pretty much went to college.
Ed Fast had a really big part in all of this too. Ed brought everything to the table as far as teaching us Latin Jazz and lending us recordings and things like that. He kind of shaped it later on.
LJC: I looked on the Artist’s Collective website, it sounds like a pretty incredible program. What sorts of things were you doing there - were you in the big band or did you do any Latin music there?
ZC: We were in the big band. Actually we did do a lot of Latin music there. We still remember a lot of the repertoire that we went through. We were there at the time that Steve Davis, Alan Palmer, Mary Davis, Nat Reeves, and Jimmy Greene were there - there were so many people there that are huge right now in jazz. That was for us, the golden era. We look back on it now, and even when we were there later on, and we were saying, “It was such a good time to be there when there were so many great musicians.” Of course, Jackie McLean would always be walking around; it wasn’t like he was never there - he was there a lot. He would always come in and talk to us, sit down in class, and give us a few pointers. He was always there, it was his school. I think it was really a great time. I learned a lot.
LJC: I read that you had jam sessions in your basement at your house, similar to the Gonzalez brothers and their upbringing. What was that scene like and how did that help you out?
ZC: I think that was the most important thing that happened. We started at a school playing Latin Jazz; it started with a summer program at the Hartford Conservatory. This program was run by a guy named Joe Velez, a great piano player from Hartford. He had a small Latin Jazz band and that was our first experience playing Latin Jazz. He showed us Mongo Santamaria’s music, Tito Puente, and things like that in a simplified version for us. For the first year of two, we learned a lot of music, he was a very good teacher. Then the program stopped, it ended. My parents were like, “Well, our kids love it so much, why don’t we just start it here?” So they talked to the parents of the kids that were already in the program. They had space in the basement and they already had the instruments, so they said, “Why don’t we just have it at our house?”
We would get together weekly and play - that was the beginning of everything. Then of course that’s when Ed Fast came by and really started to get involved and helped us out a lot. He himself had a Latin Jazz band, so he had music and recordings. George Puentes is Joel Gonzalez’s father; we grew up with Joel, he played trumpet and he was in the same programs that we were in. When we played together, George played professional congas already - he knew how it was supposed to sound and he knew what the clave was. That’s how we learned how to play clave - through them. They were doing it already. Hartford doesn’t have too much as far as places to get music, so to be involved with people who really knew what they were doing was kind of like a extremely lucky situation. That was kind of how it worked out - that was the basement!
LJC: Is that what evolved into your group Latin Flavor?
ZC: Yea, that’s exactly what happened. The parents of the kids that were there said, “Well, why don’t we just have the kids perform?” I guess they thought we sounded good! We would do community events at parks or anything. We would just perform. That was great because it gave us a chance to play. I didn’t really know what performing was. We were just doing what we thought we should be doing. But when you get older and you grow up doing something like that, you understand performance. It’s not foreign to you and you don’t give nervous as you would if you just started performing one day. So it was great, we had a great time; it was always fun, never a hassle. I don’t remember any problems.
LJC: I heard about a trip that you guys took to Cuba when you were younger - how did that come together and what did you pick up while you were down there?
ZC: My dad would take us to concerts - if it was in a three hour radius from our house and he wanted to go, we would go. He would call any kids in the neighborhood, the kids in the band, or any friends that wanted to go to the concert, and he would say, “Let’s go.” We always had a minivan and we would just pack the car with whoever wanted to go and we would drive hours to go to these concerts, all the time. He would bring us to these gigs to see these great musicians playing. He didn’t care if we wanted to go or not, he would say, “O.K. guys, in the car, we’re going!”
That’s kind of how we met a lot of musicians - I met Papo Vazquez when I was really young and now I play with him. We met Jerry Gonzalez And The Fort Apache Band. We used to be little kids playing in the playground and then we would be going to see a show from Jerry Gonzalez And The Fort Apache Band. Now we play with them; they’ve known us since we were really young. It was the same with so many people. Charles Flores, who is the bass player for Michel Camilo gave me my first gig when I was fourteen or fifteen. We’ve known musicians for such a long time.
So we went and on one of these trips - we went to Bradley’s in New York and we saw Chucho Valdes play. It must have been 1997. When we saw Chucho play, somebody told him that my brother played bass. So he called Luques up on stage to play with him. Luques went up on stage and played with him and he loved it so much. He said, “Man, I want to bring you to Cuba!” Somebody else told him, “Well, they have a young band of all kids.” So we sent him some information, he contacted us, and invited us out to Cuba that next winter. We all went out there and played. Then later he invited us out again. The first time we went, Ed Fast hooked us up musically to go out there. He had been working with us for a little while by then, so it was cool.
LJC: Anybody that you saw down there that really kind of turned your head around musically?
ZC: Everybody. We went to rehearsals with local bands, we went to shows, we were bombarded with music consistently while we were down there. It was amazing. We had such a great time.
LJC: For a young person going down there, that must have been so eye opening.
ZC: It was, especially the second time. We were a little bit older then, so we got to understand a little bit more of what was happening.
LJC: How old were you when you went down there?
ZC: The first time was 1997 and then the second time that we went was in 1999. They were two years apart. By the time we went down in 2000, I was in my first year of college. We’re actually trying to go back again now.
———- WEST COAST LATIN JAZZ FANS - CHECK OUT THE CURTIS BROTHERS THIS WEEK!
The Curtis Brothers Quartet will be making their first West Coast appearance this week, performing throughout the Bay Area. Don’t miss this opportunity to hear cutting edge music performed by the next generation of Latin Jazz greats. Come out for the music, bring your friends, and spread the word about his amazing group. Show your support for this amazing group making a rare appearance!
CURTIS BROTHERS WHEN: Thursday 7/29/10 WHERE:Kuumbwa Jazz Center
320-2 Cedar Street
Santa Cruz, CA TIME: 7:00 p.m. TICKETS: $12 in advance; $15 at the door; $24.60 with dinner
WHEN: Friday 7/30/10 WHERE:Sonoma Jazz At The Bistro
420 First Street East
Sonoma, CA TIME: 7:00 p.m. TICKETS: NO COVER
WHEN: Saturday 7/31/10 WHERE:West End Studio Theatre
1554 4th Street
San Rafael, CA TIME: 8:00 p.m. TICKETS: $25
WHEN: Wednesday 8/4/10 WHERE:CODA
1710 Mission Street
San Francisco, CA TIME: 7:00 p.m. TICKETS:$7
WHEN: Thursday 8/5/10 WHERE:Stamford Shopping Center
180 El Camino Real
Palo Alto, CA TIME: 6:00 p.m. TICKETS:FREE
A musician has a responsibility to take listeners on a creative journey throughout their career. For many musicians, the journey travels through familiar territory consistently taking listeners back through the same type of musical surroundings. This type of musician generally connects with a good number of listeners, due to the pleasant and predictable nature of their music. Listeners rarely get challenged though, always moving through the safe haven of expected musical directions. More daring journeys require a more in-depth musicianship, a broader artistic scope, and an unflappable sense of adventure. This type of musician holds onto their roots but experiments on a regular basis, testing just how far they can push tradition. They hold the challenge of maintaining listeners during their twists and turns, finding ways to connect their new ideas with familiar concepts. This type of creative movement guarantees constant growth for the artist, but also means a varied and exciting listening experience.
Pianist Danilo Pérez has consistently taken listeners into unexpected artistic territory, keeping them along for the ride by the sheer virtue of his deep musicality. Born in 1965, Pérez’s father brought him into music at a young age, leading him to Panama’s National Conservatory by the age of 10. Initially studying electronics in college, a move to the States pushed Pérez back into music, and he landed at the Berklee College of Music. While attending school, Pérez performing with a wealth of well-known artists from the jazz world, including Paquito D’Rivera, Jon Hendricks, Terence Blanchard, and Claudio Roditi. Soon after graduation, Pérez earned the piano chair in Dizzy Gillespie’s United Nation’s Orchestra, bringing him into high profile concerts around the world and the concert recording, Live at the Royal Festival Hall. Following his engagement with Gillespie, Pérez continued playing with some of the jazz world’s top musicians, performing on several recordings such as Reunion from Paquito D’Rivera and Arturo Sandoval, Slow Fire from Claudio Roditi, New Arrival From Charlie Sepulveda & The Turnaround, Passages from Tom Harrell, and more. Pérez stepped into the role of a bandleader in the early nineties, first with the self-titled Danilo Pérez and then in 1993 with The Journey. Receiving critical and popular acclaim from his ingenious blend of jazz and Latin rhythms on The Journey, Pérez became an in-demand pianist, recording with saxophonist David Sanchez on Departure, guitarist Richie Zellon’s Cafe Con Leche, trombonist Conrad Herwig’s The Latin Side of John Coltrane, and more. Pérez displayed a strong connection to one of his prime influences on the 1996 recording Panamonk, placing Thelonious Monk’s work in a new light. Pérez continued his stellar work on 1998’s Central Avenue and then gathered a major cast of important musicians onto the epic Motherland. As Pérez became a bandleader to watch, he took an important sideman gig, working in saxophonist Wayne Shorter’s new quartet. Along with bassist John Patitucci and drummer Brian Blade, Pérez helped Shorter take his classic repertoire into a new millennium on recordings like Footprints Live And Beyond the Sound Barrier. While Pérez pushed boundaries in the jazz world, he kept a connection to his roots, serving as artistic director of the Panama Jazz Festival. Pérez has a new album arriving at the end of August 2010, Providencia, which promises once again to drive his music further into new and exciting directions.
Pérez’s dedication to outstanding musicianship and a constant artistic evolution makes each of his new projects a highly anticipated adventure. As we wait for Providencia, we’ll be keeping an eye on some of his inspiring past musical projects with today’s Weekly Latin Jazz Video Fix. In the first two clips, you can find Pérez performing with his trio, digging into a Latin Jazz version of Thelonious Monk’s “Think Of One.” The third video is a sight to behold as Pérez trades mind boggling solos with Papo Lucca at the Panama Jazz Festival. The last feature finds Pérez performing with jazz legend Wayne Shorter, bassist John Patitucci, and drummer Brian Blade, playing “Masqualero.” There’s some serious music to behold in all four videos that you won’t want to miss - enjoy!
———- Danilo Pérez Trio Performing “Think Of One” - Part 1
Danilo Pérez Trio Performing “Think Of One” - Part 1
Danilo Pérez Trading Piano Solos With Papo Lucca
Danilo Pérez Performing “Masqualero” With The Wayne Shorter Quartet
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Want to hear more from Danilo Pérez? Check out these albums: Panamonk
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Do you have a video to contribute to satisfy our weekly Latin Jazz video fix? If so, send it in - it’s time to feed our addiction. I’m looking for live performances, from any context. I’ll most likely be posting one video per week, but if you’ve got another idea, let’s talk. So come on Latin Jazz videographers, musicians, and fans - let’s share some of our memorable videos! Get my contact info HERE.
Latin Jazz This Week will bring you a weekly look into news from the Latin Jazz world. You’ll find new releases, recommended performances, web finds, and more. You can check out some current sounds in the Listening Center tab at the top of the page. Performance dates will be kept in the Live Latin Jazz tab at the top of the page.
NEWS
Radio played a big part in the development and evolution of Latin Jazz, and in more recent decades, public radio served as a lifeline for the promotion and success of both well-known and new artists. As we’ve moved into the twentieth century, the listening public has moved away from the radio onto the internet, but dedicated radio DJs are finding ways to keep Latin Jazz alive and kicking. One of these DJs, Nicholas Marrero celebrated one year on the air at WUMR in Memphis with his Latin Jazz show Mundo Jazz. Marrero has spent the last year spinning some great Latin Jazz from the past and present, every Saturday from midnight to six. It’s great to hear success stories on this end, I hope that Marrero enjoys many more years on the air - if you’re in the Memphis area, you can tune into 92 FM or stream Marrero from anywhere in the world from HERE.
Congratulations to Gabriel Alegria And The Afro-Peruvian Sextet for successfully reaching their Kickstarter fundraising goal of $9,000. Their newest recording, Pucusana, will be released on August 6th and benefit from a large promotion campaign due to the funds raised in the Kickstarter drive. Hopefully this will help spread the word about Afro-Peruvian Jazz around the world, led by the top quality work from Alegria and his group.
I had every intention of chopping Latin Jazz This Week into two pieces this week, but life got the best of me. I’m still not sure if this would be the best path for this feature - I’d love some feedback from regular LJC readers. What do you think - do you need your Latin Jazz This Week in small more digestible chunks or do you like it all in one big helping? Let me know!
If you’re in SOUTH AMERICA this week . . . EDMAR CASTANEDA
With Hamilton De Holanda WHEN: Tuesday 7/27/10 WHERE:Espaço SESC
R. Domingos Ferreira, 160
Rio de Janeiro, 22050-010, Brasil TIME: 9:00 p.m. TICKETS: R$4
WHEN: Thursday 7/29/10 WHERE:SESC Quitandinha
Av. Joaquim Rolla nº, 2
Rio de Janeiro - RJ, 25651-072, Brasil TIME: 9:00 p.m. TICKETS: R$4
LEONARDO CIOGLIA WHEN: Wednesday 7/28/10 WHERE:Palácio das Artes
Av. Afonso Pena, 1537, Centro
Belo Horizonte, Brazil TIME: 8:00 p.m. TICKETS: R$40 - R$50
PAQUITO D’RIVERA
Guest Artist With The Vana Gierig Group WHEN: Wednesday 7/28/10 WHERE:Palácio das Artes
Av. Afonso Pena, 1537, Centro
Belo Horizonte, Brazil TIME: 9:30 p.m. TICKETS: R$40 - R$50
YURI JUAREZ WHEN: Saturday 7/31/10 WHERE:Jazz Zone
Av La Paz 646 Pasaje El Suche
Miraflores, Lima, Peru TIME: 10:30 p.m. TICKETS: 35 soles
If you’re in EUROPE this week . . . ARTURO SANDOVAL WHEN: Monday 7/26/10 WHERE:Piazza Matteotti
Intersection of Via Monteoliveto Via A Diaz and Via Battisti Greve
Chianti, Italy TIME: 9:30 p.m. TICKETS: 20 euros
SAMUEL QUINTO WHEN: Thursday 7/29/10 WHERE:Sheraton Hotel
R. do Ten. Valadim 146
4100-221 Porto, Portugal TIME: 10:30 p.m.
If you’re in ASIA this week . . . OMAR SOSA WHEN: Sunday 8/1/10 WHERE:Motion Blue
Yokohama, Japan TIME: 5:30 p.m. & 9:00 p.m.
If you’re in CANADA this week . . . AMANDA MARTINEZ
Canmore Folk Festival WHEN: Saturday 7/24/10 WHERE:Fraser River Heritage Park
Mary Street
Mission, BC TIME: 6:00 p.m. TICKETS: $50 in advance; $55 at door
If you’re in ALASKA this week . . . JOVINO SANTOS NETO WHEN: Tuesday 7/27/10 WHERE:Davis Concert Hall
University of Alaska Fine Arts Building
Fairbanks, AK TIME: 8:00 p.m. TICKETS: $25
If you’re on the EAST COAST this week . . . AFRO-BOP ALLIANCE
Trio WHEN: Wednesday 7/28/10 WHERE:Talara
615 President Street
Baltimore, DC TIME: 8:00 p.m.
BOBBY SANABRIA
Quarteto Aché WHEN: Wednesday 7/28/10 WHERE:Fonda Boricua
172 East 106th Street
New York, NY TIME: 7:30 p.m. & 9:30 p.m. TICKETS: $10
CHICO O’FARRILL’S AFRO-CUBAN JAZZ ORCHESTRA WHEN: Sunday 8/1/10 WHERE:Birdland
315 W. 44th Street
Manhattan, NY TIME: 9:00 p.m. & 11:00 p.m. TICKETS: $30
CHEMBO CORNIEL WHEN: Friday 7/30/10 - Saturday 7/31/10 WHERE:Creole Restaurant
2167 Third Avenue
New York, NY TIME: 7:00 p.m. & 10:00 p.m. TICKETS: $15
CHRIS WASHBURNE & S.Y.O.T.O.S. WHEN: Sunday 8/1/10 WHERE:Smoke
2751 Broadway
New York, NY TIME: 8:00 p.m., 10:00 p.m. & 11:30 p.m. TICKETS: $20 minimum
ED FAST & CONGA BOP WHEN: Wednesday 7/28/10 WHERE:Firebox Restaurant
539 Broad Street
Hartford, CT TIME: 8:00 p.m.
EDDY MARTINEZ WHEN: Friday 7/30/10 WHERE:Fonda Boricua
172 East 106th Street
New York, NY TIME: 9:00 p.m. TICKETS: $10
ELEONORA BIANCHINI WHEN: Friday 7/30/10 WHERE:Tutuma Social Club
164 East 56th Street
New York, NY TIME: 8:00 p.m. & 10:30 p.m. TICKETS: NO COVER
ERIC KURIMSKI WHEN: Thursday 7/29/10 WHERE:Terraza Cafe
40-19 Gleane St
Elmhurst, NY TIME: 10:00 p.m. TICKETS: FREE
FRANK VILLAFAÑE & 3 TO CLAVE WHEN: Friday 7/30/10 WHERE:Moonstruck Restaurant
517 Lake Avenue
Asbury Park, NJ TIME: 7:00 p.m.
GABRIEL ALEGRIA AFRO-PERUVIAN JAZZ SEXTET WHEN: Saturday 7/31/10 - Sunday 8/1/10 WHERE:Tutuma Social Club
164 East 56th Street
New York, NY TIME: 8:00 p.m. & 10:30 p.m.; Sunday - 7:00 p.m. & 9:00 p.m. TICKETS: NO COVER
GREG DIAMOND WHEN: Wednesday 7/21/10 WHERE:Flutebar - Gramercy
40 East 20th Street
New York, NY TIME: 8:00 p.m.
HENDRIK MUERKENS WHEN: Thursday 7/29/10 WHERE:The Bar Next Door
129 MacDougal Street
New York, NY TIME: 8:30 p.m. & 10:30 p.m. TICKETS: $12
LAYLA ANGULO WHEN: Thursday 7/29/10 WHERE:The Bitter End
147 Bleeker Street
New York, NY TIME: 10:30 p.m.
NEW YORK SAMBA JAZZ BAND WHEN: Thursday 7/29/10 WHERE:The Cooper Union, Rose Auditorium
41 Cooper Square
New York, NY TIME: 7:00 p.m. & 9:30 p.m. TICKETS: $30
PAQUITO D’RIVERA
Guest Artist With Synchronicity WHEN: Saturday 7/31/10 WHERE:Shalin Liu Performance Center
37 Main Street
Rockport, MA TIME: 8:00 p.m. TICKETS: SOLD OUT
SANDY CRESSMAN WHEN: Saturday 7/31/10 WHERE:House Concert
2712 W Fontainebleau Drive
Dunwoody, GA TIME: 7:00 p.m. TICKETS: $25
SUSAN PEREIRA & SABOR BRASIL WHEN: Thursday 7/29/10 WHERE:Branford Town Green
1019 Main Street
Branford, CT TIME: 6:30 p.m. TICKETS: FREE
WHEN: Sunday 8/1/10 WHERE:Dana Discovery Center
Central Park and 110th St.
New York, NY TIME: 2:00 p.m. TICKETS: FREE
WILLIE MARTINEZ WHEN: Wednesday 7/28/10 WHERE:St. John’s University Great Lawn
80-00 Utopia Parkway
Jamaica, NY TIME: 7:00 p.m. TICKETS: FREE
WHEN: Thursday 7/29/10 WHERE:Nuyorican Poet’s Cafe
236 East 3rd Street
New York, NY TIME: 9:00 p.m. TICKETS: $7
If you’re in the MID-EAST this week . . . CRAIG RUSSO LATIN JAZZ PROJECT WHEN: Friday 7/30/10 WHERE:Sangamo Club
227 East Adams Street
Springfield, IL TIME: 6:00 p.m.
LOS GATOS WHEN: Wednesday 7/28/10 WHERE:Live At PJ’s
102 S 1st St
Ann Arbor, MI TIME: 8:00 p.m. & 9:15 p.m. TICKETS: $7
PAULINHO GARCIA
Two For Brazil WHEN: Wednesday 7/28/10 WHERE:Jazz Showcase
806 S. Plymouth Court
Chicago, IL TIME: 8:00 p.m. & 10:00 p.m. TICKETS: $10
TUMBAO BRAVO WHEN: Sunday 8/1/10 WHERE:Sangria’s
401 South Lafayette Avenue
Royal Oak, MI TIME: 9:30 p.m. TICKETS: $5
If you’re in the MID-WEST this week . . . EDDIE PALMIERI
Vail Dance Festival With Savion Glover WHEN: Tuesday 7/27/10 WHERE:Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater
530 S Frontage Road E
Vail, CO TIME: 6:30 p.m. TICKETS: $17 - $75
If you’re on the WEST COAST this week . . . CURTIS BROTHERS WHEN: Thursday 7/29/10 WHERE:Kuumbwa Jazz Center
320-2 Cedar Street
Santa Cruz, CA TIME: 7:00 p.m. TICKETS: $12 in advance; $15 at the door; $24.60 with dinner
WHEN: Friday 7/30/10 WHERE:Sonoma Jazz At The Bistro
420 First Street East
Sonoma, CA TIME: 7:00 p.m. TICKETS: NO COVER
WHEN: Saturday 7/31/10 WHERE:West End Studio Theatre
1554 4th Street
San Rafael, CA TIME: 8:00 p.m. TICKETS: $25
ESTRADA BROTHERS WHEN: Saturday 7/31/10 WHERE:Steamer’s
138 W. Commonwealth Avenue
Fullerton, CA TIME: 8:30 p.m. TICKETS: $8
GRUPO FALSO BAIANO WHEN: Friday 7/30/10 WHERE:La Peña Cultural Center
3105 Shattuck Avenue
Berkeley, CA TIME: 9:00 p.m. TICKETS: $12 in advance; $14 at door
KAT PARRA WHEN: Friday 7/30/10 - Saturday 7/31/10 WHERE:D’Vine Wine and Jazz
775 Cochrane Road
Morgan Hill, CA TIME: 8:00 p.m. TICKETS: FREE
LOUIE CRUZ BELTRAN WHEN: Thursday 7/29/10 WHERE:Maverick’s Flat
4225 So. Crenshaw Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA TIME: 8:00 p.m. TICKETS: $10
MELENA FRANCIS VALDES WHEN: Friday 7/30/10 WHERE:Steamer’s
138 W. Commonwealth Avenue
Fullerton, CA TIME: 8:30 p.m. TICKETS: $8
PETE ESCOVEDO WHEN: Thursday 7/29/10 WHERE:Plaza de Cesar Chavez
Market Street between San Fernando and San Carlos streets
San Jose, CA TIME: 5:30 p.m. TICKETS: FREE
SCOTT MARTIN WHEN: Saturday 7/31/10 WHERE:Hip Kitty
502 West 1st Street
Claremont, CA TIME: 8:00 p.m.
VW BROTHERS WHEN: Sunday 8/1/10 WHERE:CODA
1710 Mission Street
San Francisco, CA TIME: 7:00 p.m. TICKETS:$10
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Once a musician matures into an intelligent and experienced artist, they have several choices about the purpose behind their music. Their musical output could simply be a way to connect with the public, making them dance or causing an emotional reaction. They might dig deep inside their identity and creatively blend together musical pieces, constructing an artistic reflection of their inner personality. They could look at the world around them and see a need for action, turning their music into a modern and potent social commentary. Any direction holds relevance to the musical world, but a musician needs to be aware of these possibilities and move in one direction.
Standing upon the experience of a solid musical background, trombonist Chris Washburne continues to make bold artistic statements about music, culture, and more. After spending his youth involved in music, Washburne indulged his love for both classical music and jazz at the University of Wisconsin. While pursuing a master’s degree in The New England Conservatory’s Third Stream program, Washburne discovered Latin music and soon became a permanent fixture upon Boston’s salsa scene. A move to New York found Washburne establishing himself as a strong part of the Latin music scene, playing with the world’s best artists while earning his doctoral degree in ethnomusicology at Columbia University. As his career moved into high gear, Washburne was diagnosed with terminal cancer in his face, effectively ending his career as a trombonist. He refused to give into the disease though, and after surviving the cancer, he made a miraculous return to trombone performance. His group SYOTOS landed regular gigs in New York, allowing them to develop material for their first two recordings, Nuyorican Nights and The Other Side (El Otro Lado). Following the attacks on September 11th, 2001, Washburne recognized the disturbed state of New York, and reacted with a statement about the city, Paradise in Trouble. In the years following the September 11th attacks, things didn’t get much better and Washburne once again made a political statement with his next release, Land of Nod. Today, Washburne has chosen to reflect upon his role as a father, focusing upon the softer side of SYOTOS with Fields of Moons. A combination of original material, arrangements of classic jazz material, and more, the album cleverly brings down the dynamic while turning up the creativity. Constantly developing himself musically and socially, Washburne continues to deliver challenging and creative music that says volumes about the musician and the world around him.
From his early releases with SYOTOS to Fields of Moons, Washburne has consistently emerged as an artist with strong musical skills, creative compositional approaches, and loads of integrity. The strength of his creative energy shows no sign of stopping, with his outstanding musical voice being a consistent piece of the Latin Jazz scene. In Part one of our interview with Washburne, we looked at his musical beginnings, his dual love for jazz and classical music, his discovery of Latin music, and more. Part Two of our interview dug into Washburne’s early days in New York, his first gigs with SYOTOS, his interest in ethnomusicology, and more. Part Three delved into Washburne’s life threatening battle with cancer, his first albums with SYOTOS Nuyorican Nights and The Other Side (El Otro Lado). Today we conclude our interview, catching up to speed on Washburne’s politically charged albums Paradise in Trouble and Land of Nod, as well as his current release Fields of Moons.
———- LATIN JAZZ CORNER: In 2003, you released Paradise in Trouble. Was that related to the September 11th attack?
CHRIS WASHBURNE: Oh, damn straight! During the writing of that music, September 11th happened, and it basically just killed the downtown scene for music. I still don’t think that the Nuyorican has recovered from that. I was in the city at the time that it happened, and it was a pretty messed up time for all of us. I had to come to terms with the feelings that I was having about that. The Nuyorican was shut down because it was downtown, but Smoke was happening. The last thing that any of us wanted to do was play a gig, but just a couple of days after the attack we were playing at Smoke. We got there and no one wanted to play, but the place was absolutely packed. And it wasn’t packed with tourists; it was only packed with locals. It was like New Yorkers needed to come together and just be together. I was like, “Oh, this is the role of music in society right now. I can’t be down in the pile helping out. I’m not a doctor - what can I do to contribute and help recover from this attack? This is my role.” It was one of the best gigs that we’ve played in our entire lives. The music was just so charged. The audience was so into it and so appreciative. It was just this communal experience that I’ve rarely had playing music. We went into the studio shortly after that and I just wanted to try to capture that feeling with a wide range of grooves and a wide range of styles. I started writing some music that attempted to capture some of the feelings that we had at that time - there’s a lot more dissonance on that record. The title comes from that feeling that New York is a type of paradise in a variety of ways, and it was definitely a paradise that was in trouble.
At The Nuyorican, we were having lots of people from all over the world sit in with us, and we’d do these kind of cross-cultural jams. The intent was to write music that highlighted some of their playing. So we had Bernard Woma from the Ghanaian National Dance Troupe on that record as a guest artist and Valerie Naranjo, the great percussionist who plays Ghanaian music and different African styles. Even the artist that did the cover art, Kevork Mourad, he actually used to sit in with us and improvise painting while we were playing. The painting on the cover is inspired by a performance and an improvisation that he did while we were playing.
LJC: That experience with Paradise in Trouble was connected directly to Land of Nod, which was the next step, reflecting the political events after September 11th. How did it all inspire the music on Land of Nod?
CW: That’s right. So many things changed in our society after 9/11 and I just felt that politically what was happening, our government just seemed to be disconnected. We were really at the sympathy of the world. At that moment after that attack, it was such a great opportunity for the entire world to come together. Everybody was with us and we totally blew it. I travel all the time and people are not happy with us. They are not happy with our government - they’re still not. It’s because of the way we operate in this world. We operate in many ways - and I’m speaking in very generalized terms, mostly about how our government works - we are very unsympathetic to local concerns, to local ideas, and to the strength of diversity in coalition. They use the world coalition and it’s pretty loose, not much of a coalition going on.
When I saw the power of music after 9/11, I was just like, “You know what? I can’t shut up anymore.” So all the music that was written on Land of Nod, is really a political critique. There’s no vocals on it, but the sentiment is there. It’s like the idea was, why is everybody asleep? Why aren’t more people speaking out? Why aren’t more people protesting? Land of Nod is a biblical expression, but it’s also from Jonathan Swift. His version of it is a place where all the citizens are asleep and therefore the rulers can do whatever they want, because everybody is in this slumbering state. It’s a wake-up call.
LJC: Land of Nod was instrumental music, which leaves meaning open to interpretation. Do you feel like your meaning got across to people?
CW: I don’t care if it did. I hope it did, but ultimately, I just want people to enjoy the music. I did want people to know that there was sentiment behind this, and that’s why I wrote in the liner notes what I did, explaining things in loose terms. That’s the value and the beauty of instrumental music - the interpretation is in the eye or ear of the listener. You can ignore those liner notes and listen to it as whatever you want. You can listen to it and you can try to hear the intent of the composer. I think either way is equally satisfying. I personally don’t mind if someone just says, “I just like the grooves. I just like the tunes.” That’s fine, but I also want people to be aware that I feel very strongly and committed to trying to make a difference. If this music can make a little bit of a difference and make the world a more positive place, all the better.
LJC: I wanted to ask you a little bit about NYNDK, it’s outside the Latin Jazz world, but it’s great music. It certainly holds a cross-cultural element. Could you tell me a little bit about that group and how it came together?
CW: I’m the kind of person that gets bored if I just do the same thing over and over again. I like change. There’s more to me than my Latin Jazz work. Musically, I want to do more stuff. I needed a band that I could go in different directions with that wouldn’t necessarily forsake the identity of SYOTOS. So I didn’t want to do this with SYOTOS, I wanted to do something different.
I was playing in Europe a lot as a soloist. I was trying to get SYOTOS over there, but everybody was always saying, “the band’s too big for travel with a new band coming up.” So I thought, if you can’t beat them, join them! I hired a bunch of Europeans that I liked playing with and I was already playing with anyway. I said, “Let’s get together, write some music, and do a record.” So we started to do that and that’s how that group came about. It’s been very satisfying because it gives me an alternative voice and a way to express myself that enriches my SYOTOS playing. It’s a different kind of accent to play jazz with.
LJC: Does that group work a lot? How has that group progressed over the years?
CW: We work mainly in Europe. We do some of the major jazz festivals and do a couple of tours a year. So it’s actually kind of nice. It’s a different model than SYOTOS, which is working every single week. That’s the kind of band I don’t think I’d want to play weekly with. It takes time to think through the compositions. It’s fun when we do tours and things get tight, but it’s less of a workshop. It’s where I sit back and think a lot and compose a lot, come up with various ideas and then really spend time writing. With SYOTOS, there’s a lot of time spent composing, but it’s like, “Uh oh, we have a gig Sunday and I don’t have any new music.” So I throw together something that’s really a sketch. There’s no pressure - we can play it and it can be a total disaster and I can throw it away. Or it can be the seed of something big. It’s a different compositional and creative process.
LJC: When I first read the description of Fields of Moons as a quieter album, I wasn’t sure how it was going to come together. What inspired you to do in such a different direction?
CW: In a word, fatherhood. It’s kind of like SYOTOS has been a reflection of my own personal development and my ideas of what I like to do. I’m really more inclined to play loud with a lot of high energy and really rock out. That’s my rocker coming out - and SYOTOS definitely does that! When I had my son and my daughter, I wrote them lullabies. The first two songs on the album are their lullabies. I was just like, “You know what? We’ve got all this high energy, I want to take a time and see if we can actually do a quiet record.” Not necessarily SYOTOS for lovers, but I guess it could be! Something that shows our quieter side. When we play live, we actually do have a pretty big repertoire of quiet stuff. Maybe we’ll include one of those tunes on each of our records, but we haven’t really done it fully. A lot of that music that’s on there, we’ve been playing for years, from way back in the Nuyorican days. We just never recorded it, because it just didn’t fit aesthetically or for whatever reason on the recordings. This was the opportunity to try and capture that. I think that we played “Obsesion” on the very first gig that we ever did.
LJC: The first two songs write recently then?
CW: One I wrote six years ago and one I wrote two years ago!
LJC: One of the songs that really stuck out to me was your version of “When Lights Are Low.” For me that song always reminds me of the version that Miles Davis did in the fifties, but you made this great transition into a Latin setting - what was the story behind your version?
CW: The groove we use on that is danzon, which was the national dance of Cuba back at the turn of the century and a little later. It’s kind of a combination of early jazz, habanera, and various Latin rhythms, so it comes closer to swing than anything probably. It works really well at a slow tempo, so instead of doing something like a cha cha cha, which kind of squares things out, the danzon helps you round those rhythms out a little bit.
Also, Miles Davis screwed up when he recorded that tune! He forgot the bridge - they were in the recording studio and they could not remember Benny Carter’s bridge. Benny Carter’s bridge is beautiful - the chords are really hard, they’re two-five-ones that go around a cycle of thirds. So what we decided to do both versions. If you listen to that carefully, we play the Miles Davis bridge, which is not that interesting off the melody. When we solo, we’re actually soloing off Benny Carter’s original chords, which are much more complex. For the background figures behind the horn solos, we’re actually playing Benny Carter’s original melody. So if you want to know the original, that’s it and it’s a much hipper bridge than what Miles remembered.
LJC: That’s great how you link all the history together.
CW: Yea, that’s the academic jazz scholar coming out!
LJC: Another tune that I really like is the version of the Mingus tune, “Duke Ellington’s Sound Of Love.”
CW: That’s a beautiful song. I’ve just always loved that song. I’ve been playing that with jazz groups for many years. I was in a group for a while called The Boston Art Quartet. We have one record out, and we have another one in the can that we recorded ten years ago. The group broke up and it never came out. We recorded a version of that tune. It was one of my favorite ballads of all time. I really wanted to do it again, but I just couldn’t figure out when to do it. All of a sudden when we decided this ballad record was going to come out, I was like, “Ah hah! Now I can make this my own!” Of course, I did my own arrangement of it; it’s very different from what I did with the other group. It’s just because I love Mingus and I love that tune.
LJC: There’s one song on there - “Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans?” - I’d never heard that song before and I’d never heard you playing tuba so out in front. Where did that tune come from?
CW: That’s a very old tune from the 1930s by Louis Alter. It is a standard; one that isn’t played that much . . . at least up in New York, it’s played a lot more down in New Orleans. It’s lovely. Basically, we started playing that right after Katrina, kind of as a tribute to our New Orleans brethren, all the musicians that were having so much trouble and suffering. This record is not apolitical - that is our little call out to them, saying, “Hey man, we haven’t forgotten you. You’re still very much with us. Your city is not built up yet and that ain’t right.”
LJC: Do you play tuba much?
CW: Yea, I play tuba in Bobby Sanabria’s big band actually. I play bass trombone and tuba in that. I’ve been playing tuba for about fifteen years. I actually played in high school. I don’t have an opportunity to play it too often. I played it on a couple of SYOTOS records in the past, but not in a pronounced way. I also play it in Walter Thompson’s avant-garde improvisation band. It’s kind of a different musical personality that I bring out in certain musical places.
LJC: The album cover is beautiful -what’s the story behind that?
CW: My sister is an artist. She used to own a jazz club in Champaign–Urbana called Nature’s Table. But she’s an artist and she’s done all my record covers in the last five years. She did Land Of Nod as well. She basically listens to the music and paints to it intently. She’s also a jazz DJ out at small radio station in Champaign–Urbana.
LJC: SYOTOS is one of those rare things in the jazz world - you don’t have groups as much today as individuals. When you think back on the group’s twenty years, how has the group evolved and where is it going?
CW: We’ve all matured musically together. It’s really been wonderful to be a part of that development with so many musicians. I can see and hear the benefits that SYOTOS has brought to so many of them, even the ones that have moved on and had other careers. The idea with SYOTOS is developing a creative space for other musicians to shine. It’s not just all about me; it’s always been a group concept like that. We’ve all musically matured and at least from my perspective, we’re all playing on a much higher level than when we started. I don’t think it would have been possible to develop the way that we did without the opportunities that we had with these weekly gigs. It’s been very fulfilling that way. It’s also been very fulfilling getting to know other musicians so intimately and the levels that you do by playing so much together. It is such a rare experience. That intimacy can really lead to music being playing on a very high level, in a way that cannot be accomplished without that intimacy.
In terms of where we’re going, we’re going onward and upward! I’ve got a lot more music that I want to write. I’ve got a lot more places that I want to explore musically. That’s where we’re going - we’re traveling stylistically and we’re traveling musically. We’re already starting to work on the next record. We’re going to really rock out - way more than in the past, in a way that we haven’t done before!
———-
Make sure that you read Part One of our interview with trombonist Chris Washburne. The story starts here as we dig into Washburne’s first encounter with the trombone, his dual life between the jazz and classical world, his discovery of Latin music, and much more. You can find it HERE.
Some musicians carry an innate strength that pushes their musical statements out into the world with an undeniable power. They work as hard as any other musician, and in some cases they work harder; they simply refuse to let their musical ideas be cut short in any way. Many scenarios that would find a regular musician defeated - a lack of work, incompatible collaborators, lifestyle demands - all these situations simply slow this musician’s artistic momentum. When the most imposing developments alter their career, ranging from physical injury to instability, these musicians fight their way back to the top of their potential. The pure power of their inner drive keeps them racing ahead in a strong forward motion, fueled by their dedication an love for music.
Trombonist Chris Washburne’s musical inertia has taken him on an unstoppable trajectory, creating engaging music despite major life challenges. Washburne fell in love with music during his youth in Ohio, and after much performance experience, he landed at the University of Wisconsin for college music studies. His connection to multiple musical worlds led him to the Third Stream program at New England Conservatory for graduate work in music. He discovered Latin music in Boston, lighting a passion for salsa and more which led directly south to New York City. Sensing the competitive nature of New York’s music scene, Washburne enrolled at Columbia University for doctoral studies in ethnomusicology. Washburne quickly found work on New York’s Latin music scene though, rapidly building a full schedule of performances with some of the world’s top Latin music figures. As his career launched forward at full speed, Washburne hit a road block when a doctor found terminal cancer in his face. The removal of the cancer saved his life, but it also destroyed the nerves in his face, effectively ending his career as a trombonist. Washburne refused to accept this fate though, and he slowly rebuilt his ability to play trombone and create music. After a long healing process, his group built momentum again, landing a weekly gig at the Nuyorican Poet’s Cafe. The band took advantage of their regular performances, developing strong original repertoire for an original release Nuyorican Nights. The group nailed down a second regular gig at Smoke while Washburne worked as a sideman with some of the genre’s best musicians. He recorded an album in tribute to one of his employers, Tito Puente, who died right before the recording. The Other Side (El Otro Lado) remembered El Rey with class and style, once again solidifying the importance of Washburne’s work. With a full musical journey behind him, Washburne continued forward, remaining fully dedicated to his life as a musician.
After establishing himself as one of the busiest musicians on the scene, winning a life threatening bout with cancer, and raising the profile of his own band with outstanding recordings, there’s no doubt that Washburne’s musical trajectory would last far into the future. In Part One of our interview with Washburne, we talked about his initial encounters with music, his dual love for jazz and classical music, and his discovery of Latin music. In Part Two of our discussion, we looked at his early days on New York’s Latin music scene, the formation of SYOTOS, and his interest in ethnomusicology. Today, we spend some time focusing upon Washburne’s life changing battle with cancer, his return to the scene, the creation of Nuyorican Nights, The Other Side (El Otro Lado), and more.
———- LJC: Early on in SYOTOS, you had an experience with cancer in your face that changed your life; can you tell us a little bit about what happened?
CW: That was a very difficult time in my life. Basically, anytime I would play more than five hours in a day - which I was doing everyday - I had a small mole in my face that was starting to get sore. So I went to a plastic surgeon and said, “Hey man, I’m a trombone player, but this is bugging me and I need to get it taken off.” He said, “Yea, no problem.” When I went in for the procedure and they started to do it, they said, “You know what? We’ve got to get this tested.” It was within two days, my entire life turned upside down. They said, “Look, you have a very small chance of surviving this; this is a really deadly kind of cancer. The only way that you’re going to survive is if you get this taken off right now. We have to do it in such a way that we remove all the nerves and muscles from one side of your face.” It was like, “Yea, but I’m a trombone player.” They said, “Not anymore.” So, not only was I dealing with my own mortality, but what was even worse was loosing my own personalized identity. If I was going to survive this, my life was going to be completely different than how I knew it. Being a trombonist was just so much a part of who I was and how I expressed myself artistically and personally.
They did the surgery, and the guy was very conservative in how he did it. He tried to save as much of the muscle as he could, but he couldn’t save the nerves. The surgery was successful and I actually pulled though and survived. Then he said, “I don’t think you’re going to play trombone anymore.” I was sitting there about three months after the surgery, and I hadn’t played a note. I was looking at my trombone case in the corner, and I thought, “You know what? I’m going to try.” I picked it up and it was a disaster - I could play like two notes for two seconds and then I was in pain. I just said, “If I can play two notes today, then I’m going to play three notes tomorrow and I’ll play for three seconds.” I called up the doctor and told him what I was going to do, and he said, “Well, be careful. You could damage the surgery that I have to do, and I have to do more plastic surgery to get rid of you scar.” And I said, “You’re not coming near my face again, I’ll live with the scar.” So I still have a pretty big scar on my face.
After about six months of that - playing one more note for one more second each day - I had my first professional gig. People were very nice to me. Pete “El Conde” in particular was extremely nice. I could barely play, but they let me play on their gigs so I could get some money. It took me about two or two and a half years to fully come back and re-learn how to play with half of the muscles that I had before. And I’m playing without any feeling, so you have to play completely by ear, you can’t really play by feel.
LJC: Is it still like that for you?
CW: Yea. The nerves don’t come back. Some muscles have regenerated, but the nerves don’t come back.
LJC: that must have given you a totally different perspective on music and what you wanted to do. What changed for you?
CW: I was just happy to be on a gig! Every note I played, I was like, “Oh cool, it came out!” I was no longer trying to play the perfect solo on Giant Steps, I was like, “I’ll just play a perfect note on Giant Steps and I’ll be happy.”
When I was diagnosed with cancer, it was July 10th, and again, we were booked to play Bastille Day at that same French restaurant where we started. That day, we were still booked as Chris Washburne And His Latin Jazz Group. I had told the doctor to delay the surgery by a few days so that I could at least play my last gig. So he did. It was during that gig that all of a sudden that phrase, “See You On The Other Side” came into my head, right in the middle while I was playing. I just started introducing the band as “See You On The Other Side Band.” The guys in the band were kind of like, “What?!?” I explained it to them afterwards - I said, “After this gig, I’m going to be on the other side of things. It’s either going to be on the other side in a different world or at least not a trombone player anymore.” When I finally got back and started playing with the band again, I just started calling it SYOTOS, which is the acronym for “See You On The Other Side,” as a tribute to that experience - I am on the other side and let’s see what we can find.
LJC: You started something that’s kind of rare today with SYOTOS, a regular gig at the Nuyorican Poet’s Cafe.
CW: Yea, the regular gig started after the cancer bout. That started 19 years ago. It’s funny; I didn’t really want a regular gig. I was still getting my chops back and they called and said, “Can you play on Thursday?” I said “O.K.” and we played. That was right when their band that had been playing on Thursday got fired or something happened. They said, “We need a Thursday band, could you play?” I was like, “Well, alright . . .” never imagining in my life that it would last ten years. It really grew into something.
That was why SYOTOS came together. We developed our band sound then, and we developed a huge repertoire. Our first record is called Nuyorican Nights as a tribute to that. It was just such a blessing. Most of those weeks I played for no money, I just gave all the money to the band. It was just a door gig. It was really a very special time and the reason why we could develop a band sound. You know, there’s not a lot of bands around. There’s a lot of great musicians that play, but not regular working bands.
The kind of funny thing was I never really tried to pursue getting regular gigs. Now we play at Smoke every Sunday night. It was the same thing - they called me. They had a band that didn’t work out, and they said, “Hey, we heard that you play the Nuyorican every week. Could you play here every week?” I was like, “Oh, O.K. . . .” So it’s not the regular model of trying to scrounge gigs, because it’s so hard to find places to play these days for a lot of musicians. But it’s been a real blessing, and it’s something very special about SYOTOS.
LJC: You hear a lot of first releases from groups, and it seems like they’re finding their way. Nuyorican Nights was so solid and right from the start, you could hear that you had a very solid combination of diverse music. How do you go about pulling all those worlds together?
CW: You’re playing it every night. When we first started playing that stuff, it didn’t gel. But when you’re playing every single night, you get to work it out. The reason that Nuyorican Nights in particular sounds so good is that we had been playing that music for two years, every Thursday night. We were doing different versions of it, trying out different things. What a luxury! It was trial and error. With most jazz records and a lot of Latin Jazz records now, people write music, they get together, they rehearse, they record it, and they release it. Then they go and try to find gigs based off this record. What ends up happening is the version that you get on a record is really the first version of the music. You go hear the music live and they’ve grown. They’re doing some really interesting stuff with this music that you heard on basically their first performance, which is never good. You need time to work stuff out, mature, and do something special. That’s not to say that other Latin Jazz records aren’t great, because they are. A lot of musicians on the first time are playing stuff that’s fantastic. But it’s really hard to make it sound great in that setting. It’s really easy to make it sound great if you’ve been playing it for two years every week. Then you just come in do the session, and it’s just like, “Let’s just do another version of it. Oh, that’s not as good as we’ve been playing it, let’s do another one.” You just try to capture that live feeling.
LJC: A couple of years later you came out with The Other Side (El Otro Lado), which was a tribute to Tito Puente. He passed away while you were making the album.
CW: Yea, he was supposed to be a guest soloist on it. I had played with him just a few weeks before he passed away. I did his last record. I had told him about it, I played some of the demos for him. He dug it. I said, “Tito, this is a tribute to you and your music, I’d like you to be a guest soloist.” He said, “Yea, no problem, I’ll do it.” Then a few weeks later, he passed away. It was devastating. I was really looking forward to this project and I was really missing him and those gigs. He was such a wonderful person to be on stage with. So then it became a tribute.
We actually delayed the record because there were so many tributes coming out and I thought it was in bad taste to try to take advantage commercially the passing of a great musician. So we delayed the release of The Other Side about six months so that it wouldn’t look like we were trying to capitalize on his passing. Then it came out and I was very happy with that record.
LJC: One of the things about that album, you were able to capture the iconic sound of Puente’s writing, but you were also able to be original with it - were you trying to respect Puente while putting your own spin on it?
CW: Oh yes, definitely. I had no interest in just repeating what Tito did. He did it so well, there’s no reason to copy it. So I was trying to make a SYOTOS version. I was doing his music - transcribing it, trying to play it like he did it, and making it our own somehow. There’s even some quotes from his music in my arrangements, but then my melodies are not very Tito-like.
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Make sure that you read Part One of our interview with trombonist Chris Washburne. The story starts here as we dig into Washburne’s first encounter with the trombone, his dual life between the jazz and classical world, his discovery of Latin music, and much more. You can find it HERE.
Come back tomorrow and check out Part 4 of our interview with trombonist Chris Washburne. We get into two of Washburne’s previous recordings, Paradise in Trouble and Land of Nod, as well as look at his latest Fields of Moons. Don’t miss it!
Every artist that aims for a full time professional music career hopes for longevity, a goal that often requires them to broaden their horizons. The best players may find steady work that offers significant financial rewards, but life holds many surprises for any musician. The artist might prefer a different musical focus that doesn’t pay well, requiring them to take more gigs for less money. Lifestyle choices might force the musician to restrict travel or perform certain types of gigs, once again limiting their income. On an ideal level, the musician might simply excel in a broad number of artistic directions, spreading them across the whole musical spectrum. Regardless of the circumstances, musicians need to apply themselves as performers, teachers, learners, band leaders, composers, arrangers, and more to sustain their careers over time.
Trombonist Chris Washburne made his mark on several pieces of New York’s professional music scene during the eighties and nineties, after long years of intensive training. Recruited into music by school band programs in Ohio, Washburne played trombone in symphonic bands, marching bands, jazz big bands, and rock bands throughout his youth. Fully immersed in music, Washburne attended the University of Wisconsin, splitting his time between the school’s jazz big bands and orchestral groups. Seeking a place to more fully develop his diverse interests, Washburne moved to the New England Conservatory for graduate school, diving into the Third Stream program. During his time at the conservatory, Washburne got a call for a gig, taking him into a salsa band for the first time. Enthralled with his new discovery, Washburne threw himself Boston’s salsa community, learning the ins and outs of the style. As his musical skills grew, he became determined to push himself further, so Washburne moved into New York’s large music scene. Hoping to find some stability while establishing himself in the area, Washburne applied for doctoral studies at Columbia University, landing in the ethnomusicology department. Word spread fast about Washburne’s strong musical skills though, and he soon found himself in the midst of the salsa circuit, working daily with some of New York’s top bands. Hoping to pursue his interest in jazz more fully, Washburne gathered some of the salsa world’s top musicians and began to organize sporadic Latin Jazz gigs. Washburne quickly filled his nights with steady gigs, while spending his days deep in the larger focus of ethnomusicology. As Washburne became a regular figure in New York’s greater musical culture, he touched upon a number of worlds, acting as musician, band leader, and scholar.
Washburne’s ability to simultaneously balance several roles in New York’s musical culture broadened his reach as an individual and guaranteed a long career. It opened doors, allowing him to play with Latin music legends, create cutting edge Latin Jazz, and contribute important work to the scholarly community. In Part One of our interview with Washburne, we looked at the path that got him to New York, looking at his first steps into music, his dual life in the jazz and classical worlds, and his discovery of Latin music. Today, we dive into Washburne’s early days in New York, his first gigs on the salsa scene, the development of SYOTOS, his appreciation for ethnomusicology, and more.
———- LATIN JAZZ CORNER: After you finished your studies at The New England Conservatory, did you go straight to New York?
CHRIS WASHBURNE: I took a year off and I lived up in a little fishing village - Rockport, Massachusetts. I just did freelance work. I did a lot of contemporary music. I commissioned over twenty new works for trombone, did some concerts in Boston, and was really seriously considering pursuing a career as a soloist in contemporary music. But my dream was always to come to New York City and be a studio musician. I wanted to figure out how to do that, but I had no connections. I knew one person in the music scene down in New York, and that was it. I applied almost on a whim to graduate schools. I was speaking with some of my professors at New England, saying, “I don’t want to get a DMA, but I want to learn more about Latin music.” Steve Cornelius, who was teaching ethnomusicology at New England Conservatory, said to me, “Hey, why don’t you apply to the ethno programs? You could study Latin music in graduate school and then you could play at night.” So I did.
I applied to NYU and Columbia; that was it, because I knew I wanted to be in New York. I also heard that they gave you cheap housing and a stipend. So it was like, this is great; I won’t have to flip burgers until I brake into the scene. I got into Columbia and I started to go - for me, it was just a meal ticket until I started playing. After a while, I did get busy playing in New York quite quickly. It was a really vibrant time for Latin music as well as jazz and classical music. I was making enough money to support myself, and I didn’t need to be in graduate school anymore . . . but I was actually kind of digging it. I also realized how few things had been written in English on Latin music. I said, “You know, wait a minute. This might be a great opportunity for me to actually pay back some of these musicians that have been so generous to me.” So I ended up staying in graduate school.
The way that I broke into the scene in New York was kind of funny. I knew this one guy, he was a Venezuelan musician. I called him when I came to New York, and he gave me one phone number. He gave me the number of Rolando Briceño, who is a saxophone player that played with Mario Bauza and also did a bunch of different stuff. I called him the first day I was in New York - I said, “I’m a trombone player, I just moved to town. I was told to give you a call to see if you know anyone that needs a trombone player.” He said, ” You know, tonight there’s a rehearsal with this Venezuelan singer, El Watusi, and he needs an extra trombone player for the rehearsal, can you make it?” I was like, “Yea, sure.” So I went to Boy’s Harbor, where all the Latin bands rehearse. I got there and there were four trombones sitting there, a salsa band, and this guy on piano. He came up to me and he said, “Hi, I’m Oscar Hernandez, thanks for making it. Can you play lead?” I was like, “Yea,” because I had strong classical chops and had played lead in jazz bands. So he sat me down in the trombone section on lead to check me out and we played. He said, “Hey, you sound great. We’re actually rehearsing for a gig and a recording session. Can you do them this weekend?” So, I did Watusi’s first record.
The gig was at a club that doesn’t exist anymore, and we were opening for Tito Nieves. I got there and I played. Leopoldo Piñeda from the Fania All-Stars was playing in the trombone section for Tito’s band. When they showed up early, he heard me, and he asked for my card. I knew who he was, and I got his card; it was a thrill to meet him. The next week he said, “Hey, I can’t make Tito’s gig, can you play?” This is my third week in New York! It was because I had prepared so much. At that point in my life, I could sound just like Barry Rogers when I needed to, and that’s what these guys liked. Barry was still very much on the scene.
The next week I was playing with Tito Nieves, and then the following week I got called by Isidro Infante to do another private party. I came in and I said, “What do you want me to play, lead trombone or second?” He said, “You play second.” I said, “O.K.” I sat down in the second chair and then Barry Rogers walked in. I was like, “Cool!” I remember that gig was Charlie Sepulveda, Brian Lynch, Barry Rogers, and myself - what a wonderful horn section! We were playing for this Colombian drug dealer in Queens; it was his daughter’s christening or something. This was right when the crack epidemic had hit New York, and at the end of the night, we all got paid in one-dollar bills! I remember it was $120 each and they came out with this black plastic bag filled with one-dollar bills and gave it to Isidro. It took him like three hours to count it all out for all of us. In Tito’s band at the time, Sergio George was playing piano and so that’s where I met Sergio. At that time, Sergio was just starting to work for RMM Records as the A & R man. I started doing recordings for him within a year and then started playing in the RMM All-Star band. I was playing with Combinacion Perfecta backing up every major salsa singer in the world at that time. That was really lucky. Here I am still in graduate school, touring all around the world just trying to make it back to get to my classes. It was a fun time.
LJC: Would that be the late eighties/early nineties?
CW: Yea, I came in the late eighties and that’s when Tito had his first hit - it was either ‘87 or ‘89. He was just rising. Salsa Romantica was just really taking off, and it was a thriving scene. In the mid-nineties, we were working anywhere between eight to fourteen gigs a week in New York. It was just ridiculous. Basically you would play every single night except maybe Tuesday night . . . but sometimes even Tuesdays. You’d have a double on Friday, sometimes a triple or a quadruple on Saturday, and a double on Sunday. You would have Monday or Tuesday off and it would just start all over again. You were traveling and you were doing recordings during the day time; it was really a very, very special time. I arrived at the right time, at the high point of that type of Latin music performance in New York City. That no longer exists, but at the time it was great.
LJC: A lot of guys like Ray Barretto and Tito Puente were breaking down to small groups at the time, were you doing much in the way of Latin Jazz outside the dance music world?
CW: SYOTOS is celebrating its twentieth anniversary on July 14th to be exact - it was Bastille Day, that’s when we had our first gig at a French Restaurant. We weren’t called SYOTOS at the time; we were just called The Chris Washburne Latin Jazz Group. Of course I was still very much interested in playing jazz. I was doing jazz gigs, but I noticed that there were several musicians that I was playing with on the salsa scene that were trained like I was. They didn’t just play Latin music; they were really jazz players to begin with, but then fell in love with Latin music and were doing both. That was people like the trumpet players Ray Vega and John Walsh, Barry Olsen, the piano player and trombonist, and Ruben Rodriguez, the bass player - people like that. I decided that I should just combine these two worlds that I’m working in and start doing some Latin Jazz. I had played Latin Jazz in Boston, and I had done these little Latin Jazz groups here and there. I wanted to start something on my own; it was really just hiring my friends that I was playing on the salsa scene with. I just hired those guys and we started playing little gigs around town. It was finally realizing all of this Third Stream training that I had gone through and then actually being able to do something with it.
LJC: Were the guys that you started with there the same as the musicians that are on your albums today?
CW: Off and on. The very first gig that I ever did, Dario Eskenazi was on piano, Mario Rodriguez was on bass, Robby Gonzalez was on drums, Georgie Delgado was on congas, and Ray Vega was on trumpet. The second gig, which was probably in August, Ray couldn’t make it, so John played. Robby Gonzalez couldn’t make it so Vince Cherico played. A lot of the guys that have been playing with me off and on over the years really got started very early on. Barry came in about a year and a half after that.
LJC: What was it like balancing your academic studies with ethnomusicology with your performance career?
CW: The only way that I could do what I’ve done and have these two lives, where one is academic and one is performance, is by breaking down any divides in my head and in my life. I was attracted to ethnomusicology because it was asking bigger questions than just, “What clave is this tune in and how do you play with clave?” That’s a very interesting question in and of itself, and for musicians, it’s vitally important to know these things. But I also wanted to know, “What is the significance of clave in terms of Afro-Cuban identity or Afro-Latin identity? If the clave is supposedly tied to Cuban musical styles, why is it in so many Puerto Rican styles? What is the social significance of that? What does that tell us about our history, and culturally what’s gone on in New York City?” All sorts of things like that.
I was interested in these broader questions. I was interested in knowing as much as I could about the music - not only how to play it, but where it came from historically, its musical antecedents, and also why it sounds the way it does. What is it culturally that makes cumbia sound the way it does and why doesn’t it sound like salsa? Why does salsa played by Colombian bands have a little different lilt and groove than it does when it’s played by Puerto Rican bands? Things like that, where the answers are just not only musical; they’re contextual, they’re cultural, they’re social, and they’re economic. That’s what attracted me to ethnomusicology in the first place. It’s also how I approach playing. Showing up on a gig, yea, you need to know the tunes in 2-3 or 3-2, sure. But if you really want to play this music right, you need to get much deeper into it, both structurally and culturally. That is really the path of ethnomusicology, to delve really deeply into the context.
Originally I was interested in Brazilian music; I had played a lot of Brazilian stuff and lived in Rio for a summer. I was thinking about doing a dissertation on that music, but I wasn’t playing a lot of it in New York. I thought, you know, it’s not unusual for ethnomusicologists to play in the musical scenes that they write about, but it is unusual for them to be playing at a high professional level. At that time, there was very little ethnomusicology being written from an insider’s perspective - a musician’s perspective - playing with the top echelons of whatever musical style they were working on. So I just used my performance as a research tool. It also allowed me to gain access into scenes that nobody had been able to get into. If you’re hanging out with musicians on tour twenty-four hours a day, you’re going to see things and be privy to things that a researcher that’s just coming to the gigs or sitting in the audience cannot see. That’s not necessarily saying that my perspective is any better than ones that are sitting in the audience; it’s just a different one. I could really take advantage of it and communicate something about the music and about the musicians that dedicate their lives to this music that no one else has been able to do. It gave them voice; that’s really what the goal of my research was about.
I played with a lot of bands, and I also interviewed all the people that I played with. I told them what I was doing, saying, “Hey, I’m writing a book, can I talk to you a little bit?” A lot of times it was just between sets, hanging out. I played with Tito Puente many years off and on, but I remember that we were playing in Argentina and they screwed up my flight ticket. They accidentally gave me a first class ticket! I was sitting right next to Tito in first class and Celia (Cruz) was on the other side of me. It was a nine hour flight and that was the most amazing nine hours that I had in terms of my research, just talking with them, and getting them to talk. Both of them were very gracious and totally interested in sharing different things. Who else would have had that opportunity? If you spend enough time with people, you can really kind of get to the core of the issues that are at hand.
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Make sure that you read Part One of our interview with trombonist Chris Washburne. The story starts here as we dig into Washburne’s first encounter with the trombone, his dual life between the jazz and classical world, his discovery of Latin music, and much more. You can find it HERE.
The beginning of a person’s musical life certainly can differ from their ultimate career path, a fact that makes the individual interesting and unique. Initial forays into music come from the influence of a person’s community, and the popular forces of the area tend to steer their early musical explorations. With the support of the community, the individual becomes deeply involved in music, searching for more ways to stay connected with music on an intimate level. Learning becomes a mandatory requirement for continued involvement in music, whether through private study, school, or experience. Regardless of the means, musical growth inevitably leads to greater exposure and involvement in new musical concepts. Sometimes these new directions are so intriguing and so inspiring that the musicians starts on a completely path, leading away from their initial musical loves. After years of traveling in new musical directions, the artist looks drastically different than the young person at the beginning of the journey, but the voyage results in a well rounded and insightful artist.
Trombonist Chris Washburne started his musical life far from the hard hitting world of New York’s Latin Jazz scene, moving towards that future spot through a number of important steps. Raised in Ohio, Washburne connected with the trombone through the area’s school music program, then a robust part of the region’s culture. Although rock and roll grabbed the lion’s share of Washburne’s attention as a young person, he also had exposure to jazz, expanding his musical ideas. Washburne continued his music studies at the University of Wisconsin, aiming at a degree in classical performance. Some influential professors encouraged Washburne to dive further into the jazz world during his time at the University of Wisconsin, supporting his walk between the two musical worlds. This artistic balance stuck with Washburne, and after graduating, he searched for opportunities that would allow him to expand his horizons in both jazz and classical music. The New England Conservatory’s Third Stream Program offered this type of flexibility, emphasizing improvisation within multiple traditions; Washburne soon started attending classes. During his time at the conservatory, a chance call sent Washburne to a local salsa gig, sparking a fire in the young musician. He quickly became a regular part of the salsa scene in Boston, getting an education about clave on the bandstand. As Washburne began listening, he soon discovered Eddie Palmieri’s La Perfecta, a group that featured trombonists Jose Rodrigues and Barry Rogers. He dedicated himself to an in-depth study of the music, applying his Third Stream studies to the lines between Latin music, jazz, and more. With a passion for all these different styles driving him forward, Washburne continued digging deeper, looking for a personal place within the music.
Washburne would eventually find his way to New York and become an integral piece of the Latin music scene, moving into the forefront of the Latin Jazz world with his band SYOTOS. With his 2010 release Fields Of Moons fresh in our minds and SYOTOS celebrating their 20 year anniversary, Washburne took some time to look back on his career with LJC. In the first piece of our in-depth interview, Washburne talks about his initial musical exposures, his dual exploration of jazz and classical music in college, his discovery of Latin music, and much more.
———- LATIN JAZZ CORNER: You grew up in Ohio, how did you get into music during your childhood?
CHRIS WASHBURNE: I started playing trombone in the school band program when I was in fifth grade. They had really strong marching band and concert band type of stuff happening. Back then, which is unfortunately not how it is today, everybody just kind of expected to play an instrument. Originally I wanted to play trumpet because it was loud and shiny . . . I still kind of want to play trumpet! There was a night where we went up to the high school and tried out different instruments so we could rent them and get started. I went right to the table with the trumpet and blew into it as hard as I could; I couldn’t get a sound to come out at all. So my mother said, “Do you still want to play trumpet?” I said, “Yea, sure.” She said, “Well, you’ve got to try one more instrument before we leave and before I get the trumpet.” The trombone happened to be at the table next to it, so I picked up the trombone, blew into it, and a sound came out. So the trombone picked me, I didn’t pick the trombone!
I played in the band programs, and then when I got into high school, I started to play in the jazz program too. It was in a rural area in Ohio, and it was really a place where rock and roll was big. There’s a reason why the rock and roll hall of fame is in Cleveland. It’s really a rocked out part of the country. So I wanted to be a rock and roll star. The first band that I joined was a Led Zeppelin cover band; I was playing trombone in it.
LJC: Really? How cool!
CW: Yea, looking back at it, I was onto something, really, really early. But when I was in, I wasn’t hip enough to realize that I should have just stuck with it. I could have been the first rock and roll trombone star! It was frustrating because I just couldn’t get the right timbre on the horn to sound like Jimmy Page or anybody else for that matter. So I realized when I started seeing jazz bands that trombones could be playing more of a lead role and I started gravitating towards jazz. It was really because I wanted to play a lead role as a trombonist. Of course, it took a while for me to find Latin music, because there was no Latin music in the area where I was growing up . . . there is now, but not when I growing up.
It wasn’t until I was in college at New England Conservatory that I was sent as a last minute sub to a local salsa/cumbia/merengue cover band. It was really love at first hearing. It played into that notion that the trombone is really a lead instrument in that ensemble. It’s a place where you can shine as a soloist, play parts, and really play a significant role. The trombone in a concert band or marching band is supportive. Even in traditional jazz bands, it can be a solo instrument, but it does play more of a supportive role just because of the register that you’re playing in. But not when I started checking out La Perfecta - then it was all over!
LJC: How did jazz first catch your ear?
CW: Well, I played some of the music in the jazz bands, and my stepfather was an amateur jazz drummer. He was really enamored with Count Basie and Lionel Hampton. Those bands were traveling when I was a kid, and they would play in clubs throughout the Mid-West. Every time they came into town, we would go. So I listened to that and there’s also a couple of pretty big jazz festivals out in Ohio. I remember when I was in high school, I checked out Miles Davis’ band. I got to see a lot of the top acts. I still was just listening to rock and roll, but I was gravitating towards jazz just because I could see where my place as a musician could be. There was already a path forged. I was a big fan of the rock group Chicago because of James Pankow. South Side Johnny had a trombone section, and even the Stones would have a horn section sometimes. It was the notion that I could play in a rock band like that and it would be fun, but it was kind of a marginalized position, like a background singer. That’s not really what I wanted to do.
LJC: You went to the University of Wisconsin and studied classical trombone there. Back when I studied music in college, there was a weird energy between jazz and classical music in an academic setting. How was it at that time - did you pretty much have to play in the orchestra or was there an openness to jazz?
CW: There still is a weirdness in academia between jazz and classical music. That hasn’t gone away. It’s in the scholarly pursuits and it’s also in the performance schools. It’s a real shame. There’s always been a weirdness and it’s ridiculous because both musics have fed one another for the last hundred years. That’s been easily shown in many transcriptions, interviews with musicians, and in various scholarly endeavors. But we still have this notion that there’s some kind of divide. I’ve been trying to break down that divide now for twenty-five years. I started to do it in my own practice, in my own way. If you’re going to preach something, you’ve got to practice it.
I was very, very lucky - the University of Wisconsin is a realitively small music program, and there weren’t enough jazz trombonists to fill out the jazz bands. So they had to pull from those classical players. I seriously was trying to practice to be an orchestral player; towards the end I started gravitating more towards chamber music. It was just this idea of sitting in a section - it’s really fun and if you’re in a good section in a good orchestra, it’s a real thrill and you play wonderful music. But again, it’s only from Beethoven on that you get to do anything. Classical music goes back way farther, there’s very few concertos, it’s only in the twentieth century stuff that you can really pursue anything. So I found it limiting.
I got an opportunity to play in the jazz band and luckily there were two professors at Wisconsin that were enlightened. One was Richard Davis, the bass player; he was my first jazz teacher. When he was in New York City working, he played jazz, and he also played for Stravinsky in his chamber ensembles. So he was really hip to both sides. There was also the woodwind player, Les Thimmig, who is another one who does both styles equally well. He’s a composer, teaches classical saxophone, but also is a jazz player. He was the leader of the jazz ensembles, along with Richard Davis. These were two mentors that I had early on that just never said no. They just let me do what I wanted to do. I remember that Howard Johnson, the tuba player and baritone saxophone player, came out my first year in college to be a guest soloist with the big band and to give a master class. Howard is a very unconventional player. He plays tuba in a register where no other tuba players play - he plays extremely high. Someone asked him, “Why do you play tuba like that,? Why do you play up high?” And he goes, “Because nobody ever told me that I couldn’t. Anytime that people started asking me about it, I would say, these are not my friends.” It was just like, yea, why impose limits? There’s enough limitations in this world. Why impose them on yourself?
Then when I got to New England Conservatory, I was studying with John Swallow. He was the principal trombone player in the New York Ballet for many years. He also did a lot of chamber work and worked with Gunther Schuller. He was another one who was just like, “Hell yea, man. You want to work in New York City? You’re going to have twice as many opportunities if you can do all those things, classical and jazz.” So I just kept doing it. Now of course to get certain gigs, I couldn’t tell certain people that I was playing classical music and vise versa. I remember sitting in a brass quintet rehearsal once; we were playing a transcription of a piece from Gershwin’s Porgy And Bess. Right in the middle of a phrase, I guess I phrased it “too jazzy.” The trumpet player stopped and said, “Ow, that’s jazz articulation” with this disgusted look on his face. I just looked at him and I was thinking, “Yo, if you only knew . . .” I was playing was playing with the Ellington Orchestra the next day; if they knew, they would have just fired me from this. I just looked at him, and said, “Oh god, I’m so sorry.” It was Gershwin after all, and it was Porgy and Bess, but if you want to do it real square with classical articulation, that’s fine.
LJC: You went to New England Conservatory and you were in The Third Stream Program. That’s an interesting word - today it is used to describe European Jazz and classical tinged jazz. What did that encompass for you?
CW: When I finished my undergrad, I took a year off, and I was trying to figure out what to do. Les Thimmig told me that the only program that he was aware of was at New England, which was the Third Stream program, where you could be in as many worlds as you wanted and no one’s going to blink an eye. Third Stream is a term that was coined by Gunther Schuller, back when he took over the New England Conservatory in the sixties, to refer specifically to contemporary classical composers that were using jazz in their works and vice versa. Not just using it superficially or not just borrowing, but really trying to delve deep inside the traditions and come up with something new, thus a third stream. So yes, typically, that’s what that word meant.
That changed quite drastically since the sixties. By the time that I got to the New England Conservatory, they were already toying with changing the name of the program. Now it’s called Improvisational Studies or something, it’s no longer the Third Stream department - and for good reason. The idea was to develop your own individualized improvisational style and voice where you would really delve deeply into one, two, three, four, five different traditions from around the world. It could be classical and jazz, but it could also be Middle Eastern musical styles, Latin American musical styles. Get inside it, make it your own, and then fuse it together with another tradition that you kind of embody and delved deeply into to come up with something new. So for me, it was ideal.
It was really like an intense ear-training program, but you’d be training to hear musics from different cultures and around the world. It just was wonderful for me in terms of Latin music, because I started playing it at the same time. I approached Latin music the way that I approached learning jazz where I was transcribing solos, I was memorizing tunes, and I was trying to sound exactly like Jose Rodrigues and Barry Rogers. I was trying to loose Chris Washburne for a while and then reemerge with my version of their influences and my own voice. It’s exactly what I did when I started playing jazz - learning J.J. Johnson solos and Slide Hampton solos and Frank Rosalino solos and then trying to come up with something new. That’s why I went with the Third Stream approach, and again, it allowed me to do both jazz and classical. I played in the chamber orchestra, I played in the jazz band, I studied with George Russell, and I took private lessons with Bob Moses, the drummer. It’s really one of the more creative music departments in the country, still.
LJC: What was the gig like that turned you onto Latin music, was there a scene there at the time?
CW: Yea, at that time, there were a lot of Colombian immigrants in the area. From the mid-seventies through to the early nineties, there was a huge influx of Colombians and Central Americans. Of course, there was a substantial Puerto Rican base as well in Boston. In these outlying communities, there were a lot of private parties. These were cover bands basically, playing the top cumbia, salsa, and merengue hits of the day. Usually they were musicians that had day jobs - part-time professional, semi-professional, and amateur musicians. The horn players were all drawn from the conservatories in Boston - New England Conservatory, Boston Conservatory, or places like that - and from Berklee. There just weren’t enough musicians that played horns to cover all the chairs. All those bands were fairly big - there were four, five, six horns in all of those bands. Thinking back on it now, they were probably very mediocre players, but for me, it was just so new and these rhythms were mesmerizing. I immediately heard the deep traditions that were behind them and the diversity of different rhythms that were there. It was a real challenge to have to adjust your playing accordingly. There were a couple of older horn players on the scene that had been playing Latin music for a while in Boston. They were very helpful.
The other thing that I was attracted to was culturally, with a little bit of integrity, honesty, and true love of the music, there was an openness to share those musical styles amongst those musicians. They were giving me records, turning me onto things - it felt like home. It was cool that I played jazz and classical music; it was no big deal. Of course, playing those Latin gigs, amongst jazz players, we all know the kind of animosity that can foster among that divide. Luckily this was a very friendly environment, a great place to learn. Kind of a low pressure place. They liked me as well, and for some reason, I just clicked. The regular trombone player that I started subbing for, they got rid of him and they hired me. I don’t know, we just got along, it was a happy marriage. Then I started working my way up through the echelon of the Latin bands in Boston, working with some of the better bands that were there. Often times we would open for bigger bands. I remember one time we opened for El Gran Combo, and I was like, “Oh, that’s the way it’s supposed to sound!” So the doors just kept opening and the layers of the onion started slowly peeling away and I was getting to the core of things.
There’s a lot of great Latin Jazz out there, but sometimes an album hits you so hard, it just leaves you with one question - why haven’t I been listening to this artist constantly? Many musical factors might pull your attention into a stranglehold - it might be instrumental virtuosity, improvisational daring, cleverly structured compositions, or even a combination of several musical pieces. A clear definition often escapes your understanding; you just know that this musician has got something that you need to hear in large quantities. In some cases, you’ve heard the artist before, and you’ve probably even enjoyed their work. This one recording puts everything in a new perspective though. Once you go back through all the artist’s previous recordings, things just sound different, and you spend a great deal of time looking at the music through a new light. Listening to pianist Hilario Durán’s recent release, Motion, revived my immense appreciation for his work, sending me on a compulsive trip back through his extensive musical accomplishments.
Durán’s long and diverse career deserves a deeper look, which reveals a wealth of great music. Born in Havana, Cuba in 1953, Durán was surrounded by music from his father, a guitarist, and his circle of musicians. The piano became an early love in Durán’s life, and he spent a great deal of his youth learning classics from jazz and Cuban pianists. As a teenager, Durán studied at the Amadeo Roldan Conservatory of Music, until the Cuban military pulled him into mandatory service in 1970. He played as part of the military band, connecting with many contemporary musicians, until he completed his required time in 1973. Durán returned to Havana and began his professional career, working as a sub with a number of orchestras. When pianist Chucho Valdes left the Orquesta Cubana de Música Moderna to concentrate upon Irakere, he recommended Durán as his replacement. Durán filled the large shoes left by Valdes with class and power, traveling the world and working with a number of great musicians. The job with this high profile band made Durán a well known figure on the Havana music scene, and he soon earned work as a pianist, arranger, and composer at EGREM studios. In 1981, trumpet player Arturo Sandoval invited Durán to join his band as pianist and musical director. Durán traveled the world with Sandoval, staying with the trumpet player until he left Cuban in 1990. Durán kept the remaining band members together as a working unit, calling the group Perspectiva and recording two albums. Early in the nineties, Durán began collaborating with Canadian saxophonist Jane Bunnett, recording and touring as a member of Bunnett’s Spirits Of Havana. In addition, he recorded several albums for the Canadian label Justin Time, including Killer Tumbao and Habana Nocturna. Durán made a permanent move to Canada in 1998, becoming an important piece of the Toronto music scene. His albums New Danzon and Encuentro En La Habana made big waves, with the later receiving a JUNO Award for Best Contemporary Jazz Album. In 2006 Durán expanded his concept into a big band, creating the album From the Heart, which featured Paquito D’Rivera, Horacio “El Negro” Hernandez, and more. His current release, Motion, focuses upon his trio with bassist Roberto Occhipinti and drummer Mark Kelso, once again delivering a wealth of impressive music.
Durán’s career includes a number of diverse experiences and some amazing music, well worth a repeat visit through his catalogue. With that in mind, today’s Weekly Latin Jazz Video Fix is dedicated to Durán’s music, which will also hopefully inspire you to check out his recordings. The first video features Durán performing with a trio in Toronto, filmed in a local club, Lula’s Lounge. The second clip finds Durán with Perspectiva, performing in Cuba during the nineties. The third outtake places Durán in a duet with his longtime collaborator Jane Bunnett, creating musical sparks. The last piece once again features Durán in a trio setting, this time with bassist Roberto Occhipinti and drummer Horacio “El Negro” Hernandez. All these clips represent different pieces of Durán’s career, and they all include some wonderful music - enjoy!
———- Hilario Duran Trio Performing At Lula’s Lounge In
Hilario Duran Performing With Perspectiva In Cuba
Hilario Duran Performing A Duet With Jane Bunnett
Hilario Duran Performing With Bassist Roberto Occhipinti And Drummer Horacio “El Negro” Hernandez
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Want to hear more from Hilario Duran? Check out these albums: From the Heart
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Do you have a video to contribute to satisfy our weekly Latin Jazz video fix? If so, send it in - it’s time to feed our addiction. I’m looking for live performances, from any context. I’ll most likely be posting one video per week, but if you’ve got another idea, let’s talk. So come on Latin Jazz videographers, musicians, and fans - let’s share some of our memorable videos! Get my contact info HERE.
Latin Jazz This Week will bring you a weekly look into news from the Latin Jazz world. You’ll find new releases, recommended performances, web finds, and more. You can check out some current sounds in the Listening Center tab at the top of the page. Performance dates will be kept in the Live Latin Jazz tab at the top of the page.
NEWS
I’ve been noticing that our weekly Monday post has gotten to be quite long, so I’m going to make a little change. Starting next week, I’m trying a new format for Latin Jazz This Week. On Sunday you’ll get Latin Jazz News This Week, with news, new releases, birthdays, and more. On Monday we’ll have Live Latin Jazz This Week with all the gig listings for the week. Let me know how this sits with you, I just want to make a resource that works for everyone!
Over at The Latin Jazz Network, Raul da Gama posted an interview with Brazilian trumpet master Claudio Roditi, shining some light on the influential musician. There’s some insightful words here - da Gama has obviously followed Roditi’s career closely for many years - getting deeper into the man and his music. Roditi speaks about his initial forays into jazz, the recording of Brazilliance x4, and his recent release Simpatico. There’s a lot of good stuff in there, well worth checking out. You can read the full article HERE.
Conguero Poncho Sanchez will be holding court in Seattle this week, with several performances at Jazz Alley - you can get the details in the Live Latin Jazz Listings below. In anticipation of this event, Hector Aviles from Latino Web Cafe took some time to talk with Sanchez. Aviles discusses Poncho’s great arrangers, his love for Salsa, his current release Psychedelic Blues, ideas for future releases, and much more. It’s a good insight into Sanchez - you can read it HERE. You can also check out the LJC interview with Sanchez - follow through to Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.
7/21: Percussionist Daniel Ponce, 1953
7/22: Saxophonist Mario Rivera, 1939
7/23: Percussionist Eugie Castrillo
7/24: Percussionist Bobby Matos
7/24: Percussionist Marvin Diz, 1976
———-
LIVE LATIN JAZZ
If you’re in SOUTH AMERICA this week . . . PAQUITO D’RIVERA
Guest Artist With The Vana Gierig Group WHEN: Tuesday 7/20/10 WHERE:Amazonas Jazz Festival
Manaus
Amazonas, Brazil TIME: 9:00 p.m.
YURI JUAREZ WHEN: Saturday 7/24/10 WHERE:Jazz Zone
Av La Paz 646 Pasaje El Suche
Miraflores, Lima, Peru TIME: 10:30 p.m. TICKETS: 35 soles
If you’re in EUROPE this week . . . ALFREDO RODRIGUEZ WHEN: Monday 7/19/10 WHERE:Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club
47 Frith Street
Soho, London, UK TIME: 8:30 p.m. TICKETS: £15 - £27.50
PAQUITO D’RIVERA
Guest Artist With The Vana Gierig Group WHEN: Saturday 7/24/10 WHERE:Villa Celimontana Jazz Festival
Rome, Italy TIME: 10:00 p.m. TICKETS: 15 euros
Guest Artist With Synchronicity WHEN: Sunday 7/25/10 WHERE:Incontri in Terra di Siena
Pienza, Tuscany, Italy TIME: 9:00 p.m. TICKETS: 30 euros
If you’re in CANADA this week . . . AMANDA MARTINEZ
Mission Folk Festival WHEN: Saturday 7/24/10 WHERE:Fraser River Heritage Park
Mary Street
Mission, BC TIME: 6:00 p.m. TICKETS: $50 in advance; $55 at door
JANE BUNNETT
Afro-Cuban Blues Summit WHEN: Tuesday 7/20/10 WHERE:Hugh’s Room
2261 Dundas Street West
Toronto, ON TIME: 8:30 p.m. TICKETS: $28.75 in advance; $32.00 at door
Afro-Cuban Blues Summit WHEN: Sunday 7/25/10 WHERE:Kew Gardens
Lee Avenue
Toronto, ON TIME: 5:00 p.m. TICKETS: FREE
If you’re on the EAST COAST this week . . . ADRIANO SANTOS
Brazilian Jazz Quartet WHEN: Thursday 7/22/10 WHERE:Museum Of Modern Art
11 West 53rd Street
New York, NY TIME: 5:30 p.m. & 7:00 p.m. TICKETS: FREE WITH MUSEUM ADMISSION - $20
AFRO-BOP ALLIANCE
Trio WHEN: Wednesday 7/21/10 WHERE:Talara
615 President Street
Baltimore, DC TIME: 8:00 p.m.
ALEX GARCIA’S AFROMANTRA WHEN: Thursday 7/22/10 WHERE:Colombian Nights
90 W. Palisades Avenue
Englewood, NJ TIME: 7:00 p.m. TICKETS: FREE
ANNETTE AGUILAR & STRINGBEANS WHEN: Thursday 7/22/10 WHERE:Garden Cafe
4961 Broadway
New York, NY TIME: 7:30 p.m. TICKETS: NO COVER
WHEN: Thursday 7/22/10 WHERE:Nuyorican Poet’s Cafe
236 East 3rd Street
New York, NY TIME: 9:00 p.m. TICKETS: $7
ARTURO O’FARRILL
Solo Piano WHEN: Wednesday 7/21/10 WHERE:Puppet’s Jazz Bar
481 5th Avenue Park Slope
Brooklyn, NY TIME: 7:00 p.m. TICKETS: $10
O’Farrill Family Band WHEN: Friday 7/23/10 WHERE:Falcon Arts Center
1348 Route 9W
Marlboro, NY TIME: 8:00 p.m. TICKETS: Donation
BOBBY SANABRIA
Ascension Celebrates Panamanian Vocalist Enid Lowe’s 75th Birthday Featuring Special Guest Panamanian Piano Virtuoso Frank Anderson WHEN: Wednesday 7/21/10 WHERE:Fonda Boricua Lounge
172 East 106th Street
New York, NY TIME: 7:30 p.m. & 9:30 p.m. TICKETS: $10
CHICO O’FARRILL’S AFRO-CUBAN JAZZ ORCHESTRA WHEN: Sunday 7/25/10 WHERE:Birdland
315 W. 44th Street
Manhattan, NY TIME: 9:00 p.m. & 11:00 p.m. TICKETS: $30
CHIEMI NAKAI WHEN: Friday 7/23/10 - Saturday 7/24/10 WHERE:Creole Restaurant
2167 Third Avenue
New York, NY TIME: 7:30 p.m. & 9:30 p.m. TICKETS: $15
CHRIS WASHBURNE & S.Y.O.T.O.S. WHEN: Sunday 7/25/10 WHERE:Smoke
2751 Broadway
New York, NY TIME: 8:00 p.m., 10:00 p.m. & 11:30 p.m. TICKETS: $20 minimum
ED FAST & CONGA BOP WHEN: Wednesday 7/21/10 WHERE:Firebox Restaurant
539 Broad Street
Hartford, CT TIME: 8:00 p.m.
EDWARD PEREZ WHEN: Monday 7/19/10 WHERE:Terraza Cafe
40-19 Gleane St
Elmhurst, NY TIME: 9:30 p.m. TICKETS: FREE
ERIC KURIMSKI WHEN: Thursday 7/22/10 WHERE:Terraza Cafe
40-19 Gleane St
Elmhurst, NY TIME: 10:00 p.m. TICKETS: FREE
GABRIEL ALEGRIA AFRO-PERUVIAN JAZZ SEXTET WHEN: Friday 7/23/10 - Sunday 7/25/10 WHERE:Tutuma Social Club
164 East 56th Street
New York, NY TIME: 8:00 p.m. & 10:30 p.m.; Sunday - 7:00 p.m. & 9:00 p.m. TICKETS: NO COVER
GABRIELE TRANCHINA WHEN: Sunday 7/25/10 WHERE:Brotherhood Winery
100 Brotherhood Plaza
Washingtonville, NY TIME: 12:00 p.m. TICKETS: FREE
GREG DIAMOND WHEN: Wednesday 7/21/10 WHERE:Flutebar - Midtown
205 West 54th Street
New York, NY TIME: 8:00 p.m.
WHEN: Saturday 7/24/10 WHERE:Nublu
62 Avenue C
New York, NY TIME: 9:00 p.m.
HENDRIK MUERKENS WHEN: Friday 7/23/10 WHERE:Whole Foods
2245 Springfield Avenue
Vauxhall, NJ TIME: 6:30 p.m.
LAURANDREA LEGUIA WHEN: Thursday 7/22/10 WHERE:Tutuma Social Club
164 East 56th Street
New York, NY TIME: 7:00 p.m. TICKETS: NO COVER
LEONARDO CIOGLIA WHEN: Tuesday 7/20/10 WHERE:Zinc Bar
82 West 3rd Street
New York, NY TIME: 9:30 p.m., 11:00 p.m., & 1:00 a.m. TICKETS: $10, 1 drink minimum
PEDRO GIRAUDO JAZZ ORCHESTRA WHEN: Friday 7/23/10 - Saturday 7/24/10 WHERE:Jazz Gallery
290 Hudson Street
New York, NY TIME: 9:00 p.m. & 10:30 p.m. TICKETS: $20
SAMMY FIGUEROA & HIS LATIN JAZZ EXPLOSION WHEN: Sunday 7/25/10 WHERE:Long’s Park Amphitheatre
1441 Harrisburg Pike
Lancaster, PA TIME: 7:30 p.m. TICKETS: FREE
STEVE GLUZBAND & HOT HOUSE WHEN: Friday 7/23/10 WHERE:Fonda Boricua Lounge
172 East 106th Street
New York, NY TIME: 9:00 p.m. TICKETS: $10
TÉKA PENTERICHE WHEN: Wednesday 7/21/10 WHERE:Zinc Bar
82 West 3rd Street
Greenwich Village, NY TIME: 10:00 P.M., 11:30 p.m., & 1:00 a.m. TICKETS: $10, 1 drink minimum
VANDERLEI PEREIRA AND BLINDFOLD TEST WHEN: Sunday 7/25/10 WHERE:Conservatory Garden - Central Park
105th Street and 5th Avenue
New York, NY TIME: 2:00 p.m. TICKETS:FREE
VENISSA SANTÍ WHEN: Wednesday 7/21/10 WHERE:Jazz Standard
116 E. 27th Street
New York, NY TIME: 7:30 p.m. & 9:30 p.m. TICKETS:$20
WHEN: Saturday 7/24/10 WHERE:Sound Session 2010
276 Westminster Street
Providence, RI TIME: 1:00 p.m. TICKETS:$10
If you’re in the MID-EAST this week . . . ALFREDO RODRIGUEZ WHEN: Saturday 7/24/10 WHERE:Kerrytown Concert House
415 N. 4th Avenue
Ann Arbor, MI TIME: 8:00 p.m. & 10:00 p.m. TICKETS: $10 - $25
Jazz & Rib Festival WHEN: Sunday 7/25/10 WHERE:Hanover Stage
W. Spring Street & Hanover
Columbus, OH TIME: 7:00 p.m. TICKETS: FREE
CHICAGO AFRO-LATIN JAZZ ENSEMBLE
Quintet WHEN: Sunday 7/25/10 WHERE:Room 43
1041 E 43rd Street
Chicago, IL TIME: 7:30 p.m. TICKETS: $10
CRAIG RUSSO LATIN JAZZ PROJECT WHEN: Friday 7/23/10 WHERE:Swinger’s Grille
1304 Cross Creek Drive
Normal, IL TIME: 4:00 p.m.
LOS GATOS WHEN: Wednesday 7/21/10 WHERE:Live At PJ’s
102 S 1st St
Ann Arbor, MI TIME: 8:00 p.m. & 9:15 p.m. TICKETS: $7
PAULINHO GARCIA
With Heitor Garcia WHEN: Monday 7/19/10 WHERE:Uncommon Ground
1401 W Devon Avenue
Chicago, IL TIME: 8:00 p.m.
WHEN: Wednesday 7/21/10 WHERE:SPACE
245 Chicago Avenue
Evanston, IL TIME: 7:30 p.m. TICKETS: $12 in advance; $15 on day of concert
TUMBAO BRAVO WHEN: Sunday 7/25/10 WHERE:Sangria’s
401 South Lafayette Avenue
Royal Oak, MI TIME: 9:30 p.m. TICKETS: $5
If you’re in the MID-WEST this week . . . MIGUEL ZENON WHEN: Wednesday 7/21/10 - Thursday 7/22/10 WHERE:The Outpost
210 Yale SE
Albuquerque, NM TIME: 7:30 p.m. TICKETS: $30
WHEN: Friday 7/23/10 WHERE:The Lensic
211 West San Francisco Street
Santa Fe, NM TIME: 7:30 p.m. TICKETS: $15 - $40
If you’re on the WEST COAST this week . . . FRANCISCO AGUABELLA LATIN JAZZ BAND WHEN: Saturday 7/24/10 WHERE:Steamer’s
138 W. Commonwealth Avenue
Fullerton, CA TIME: 8:30 p.m. TICKETS: $8
GRUPO FALSO BAIANO WHEN: Thursday 7/22/10 WHERE:Embarcadero Center
2 Embarcadero
San Francisco, CA TIME: 12:00 p.m. TICKETS: FREE
L.A. MAMBO COMBO WHEN: Thursday 7/22/10 WHERE:Maverick’s Flat
4225 So. Crenshaw Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA TIME: 8:00 p.m. TICKETS: $10
LATIN JAZZ YOUTH ENSEMBLE OF SAN FRANCISCO WHEN: Wednesday 7/21/10 WHERE:Union Square
Union Street
San Francisco, CA TIME: 6:00 p.m. TICKETS: FREE
MONGORAMA WHEN: Saturday 7/24/10 WHERE:Central Avenue Jazz Festival
Central Avenue Between East Vernon Avenue & East Jefferson Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA TIME: 3:00 p.m. TICKETS: FREE
Today’s crop of young artists are creating music in a very different world than the one occupied by an older generation. The popular music that surrounds them often lowers the bar in terms of musicality, and many people from their generation simply don’t value artistry at a high level. They buck the popular consensus though and learn about music in a much different fashion than their elders, spending years piling through musical details at colleges and universities. The schoolroom presents a number of different lessons than the bandstand, and their studies stock them with an academic and advanced toolbox. As a result, their musical output looks and sounds much different than their elders, building upon modern conceptions of harmony, melody, and rhythm. Armed with this musical knowledge, they then need to find a place for their music in a world that often simply doesn’t understand it and in many cases doesn’t want it. It’s an uphill battle for young jazz musicians, who find themselves dealing with a challenging set of issues in today’s music world.
ZACCAI CURTIS: Hartford is actually great. I was there recently with Kristen Anderson and Desmond Douglas. They were having the Monday night jazz series. It starts after the festival is over, so all the people from the festival come over to the club. We were playing at a restaurant called Black Eyed Sally’s. It’s just a great time. 
ZC: It was cool. I was studying with Danilo Pérez. I was really happy to be studying with him, that’s the reason why I went. When I heard his music, I knew that was the person that I wanted to study with. I never really had a jazz piano teacher before him. I had piano teachers; I don’t want to disrespect any of my piano teachers. But I never had a teacher that taught me quite like he did. So I definitely pay my respects to Danilo Pérez. I’m glad I went there, it was school though. And then afterwards it was expensive . . .
The older musicians didn’t go to school and yet they’re so incredible. What happened there? What is the situation? They were spending so much more time on their instrument than we are. I’m here trying to do anything that I can to make money, but they had gigs. I talked to so many great musicians and they would tell me that they never even heard of door gigs; that was not even something that came up. What happened was - and this is something that they should teach you in school, but they don’t - a lot of the clubs would deal drugs, so they always had their money. The club didn’t have to worry about not making money, they always had their money. Then they payed the musicians a flat fee. The musicians would have five gigs a day sometimes, and it would be continuous throughout the night. You would be getting calls for gigs that start at three in the morning. They would do consistent gigs every day, so they were on their instruments consistently. That’s why these musicians that never went to school survived. You talk to some of them, and they say, “Yea, I don’t know how to read.” But they’re so amazing. They do it all the time, that’s what they did. It’s a different time now though.
ZC: I went to New York in 2005. I came here from Boston. I was in Boston for six years. I really wasn’t happy at all there as far as music. Maybe it was just me, but I really wasn’t happy. I’m pretty adventurous and I wanted to go. I knew New York was the next move. I talked to my brother and he was definitely down; he wanted to go. A lot of people don’t want you to go, but that’s because they’re not going! It’s amazing, once we got here, we loved it right away. 
Stumble it!
A childhood immersed in great musical experiences sets the stage for the emergence of a great musician. Listening can be a powerful way to peek interest in a young person, and the more time they spend hearing music, the more it will resonate with them. The more interested a child becomes, the more likely that they will find their way to an instrument. They need large amounts of encouragement and opportunity at this point, but once they have it, they will work hard to master the details of their chose instrument. Performing with an ensemble exposes the child to the social aspect of music and gives them an idea of the rush of live music; this will only serve to encourage them more. Involvement with jazz allows a young person to express their own identity, helping them define themselves in an often confusing part of life. Each stop along the way digs a young person deeper into budding artistic conviction and opens the door to an involved musical lifestyle.
ZACCAI CURTIS: There was a lot of music happening in the house - a lot. Even before we really played music. My dad was a big fan of music in general. I still remember, everywhere we went, there was music playing or we went to concerts. My dad was always a fan of jazz and r ‘n b, funk, or whatever it was. It kind of morphed into the salsa world at one point - salsa and Latin Jazz. He didn’t really have any borders with the music, so it wasn’t that he liked either salsa or Latin Jazz. I think I remember him saying that he liked music with congas in it. So in the type of music that he listened to, usually it had some type of congas. Groups like Santana or Mandrill. He was always playing that type of music in the house, some sort of music with congas in it all the time. All of us kind of grew up with all that music. Including classical too - he wanted us to listen to everything. So he’d put on classical music in the morning or something with more sentimental type vibes. All this was before we even got into playing music.
ZC: I wanted to play - we all wanted to play. In fact, Luques was a conga player before he was a bass player - he was the conga player for our band. It would be my older brother Damien on piano, Luques played congas, and then I would play horn parts on the piano. I would say I liked it the least; but I still enjoyed it. They were really into it. As time went on, things got more defined as far as what we were doing. We started having jazz lessons, and things kind of came together. 
LJC: I looked on the Artist’s Collective website, it sounds like a pretty incredible program. What sorts of things were you doing there - were you in the big band or did you do any Latin music there?
ZC: I think that was the most important thing that happened. We started at a school playing Latin Jazz; it started with a summer program at the Hartford Conservatory. This program was run by a guy named Joe Velez, a great piano player from Hartford. He had a small Latin Jazz band and that was our first experience playing Latin Jazz. He showed us Mongo Santamaria’s music, Tito Puente, and things like that in a simplified version for us. For the first year of two, we learned a lot of music, he was a very good teacher. Then the program stopped, it ended. My parents were like, “Well, our kids love it so much, why don’t we just start it here?” So they talked to the parents of the kids that were already in the program. They had space in the basement and they already had the instruments, so they said, “Why don’t we just have it at our house?” 
That’s kind of how we met a lot of musicians - I met Papo Vazquez when I was really young and now I play with him. We met Jerry Gonzalez And The Fort Apache Band. We used to be little kids playing in the playground and then we would be going to see a show from Jerry Gonzalez And The Fort Apache Band. Now we play with them; they’ve known us since we were really young. It was the same with so many people. Charles Flores, who is the bass player for Michel Camilo gave me my first gig when I was fourteen or fifteen. We’ve known musicians for such a long time. 
A musician has a responsibility to take listeners on a creative journey throughout their career. For many musicians, the journey travels through familiar territory consistently taking listeners back through the same type of musical surroundings. This type of musician generally connects with a good number of listeners, due to the pleasant and predictable nature of their music. Listeners rarely get challenged though, always moving through the safe haven of expected musical directions. More daring journeys require a more in-depth musicianship, a broader artistic scope, and an unflappable sense of adventure. This type of musician holds onto their roots but experiments on a regular basis, testing just how far they can push tradition. They hold the challenge of maintaining listeners during their twists and turns, finding ways to connect their new ideas with familiar concepts. This type of creative movement guarantees constant growth for the artist, but also means a varied and exciting listening experience. 
. Following his engagement with Gillespie, Pérez continued playing with some of the jazz world’s top musicians, performing on several recordings such as 
from Paquito D’Rivera and Arturo Sandoval, 
from Claudio Roditi, 
From Charlie Sepulveda & The Turnaround, 
from Tom Harrell, and more. Pérez stepped into the role of a bandleader in the early nineties, first with the self-titled 
and then in 1993 with 
. Receiving critical and popular acclaim from his ingenious blend of jazz and Latin rhythms on 
, guitarist Richie Zellon’s 
, trombonist Conrad Herwig’s 
, and more. Pérez displayed a strong connection to one of his prime influences on the 1996 recording 
, placing Thelonious Monk’s work in a new light. Pérez continued his stellar work on 1998’s 
and then gathered a major cast of important musicians onto the epic 
. As Pérez became a bandleader to watch, he took an important sideman gig, working in saxophonist Wayne Shorter’s new quartet. Along with bassist John Patitucci and drummer Brian Blade, Pérez helped Shorter take his classic repertoire into a new millennium on recordings like 
And 
. While Pérez pushed boundaries in the jazz world, he kept a connection to his roots, serving as artistic director of the Panama Jazz Festival. Pérez has a new album arriving at the end of August 2010, 
Once a musician matures into an intelligent and experienced artist, they have several choices about the purpose behind their music. Their musical output could simply be a way to connect with the public, making them dance or causing an emotional reaction. They might dig deep inside their identity and creatively blend together musical pieces, constructing an artistic reflection of their inner personality. They could look at the world around them and see a need for action, turning their music into a modern and potent social commentary. Any direction holds relevance to the musical world, but a musician needs to be aware of these possibilities and move in one direction.
and 
. Following the attacks on September 11th, 2001, Washburne recognized the disturbed state of New York, and reacted with a statement about the city, 
. In the years following the September 11th attacks, things didn’t get much better and Washburne once again made a political statement with his next release, 
. Today, Washburne has chosen to reflect upon his role as a father, focusing upon the softer side of SYOTOS with 
. A combination of original material, arrangements of classic jazz material, and more, the album cleverly brings down the dynamic while turning up the creativity. Constantly developing himself musically and socially, Washburne continues to deliver challenging and creative music that says volumes about the musician and the world around him.
LJC: 
LJC: I wanted to ask you a little bit about NYNDK, it’s outside the Latin Jazz world, but it’s great music. It certainly holds a cross-cultural element. Could you tell me a little bit about that group and how it came together?
CW: We work mainly in Europe. We do some of the major jazz festivals and do a couple of tours a year. So it’s actually kind of nice. It’s a different model than SYOTOS, which is working every single week. That’s the kind of band I don’t think I’d want to play weekly with. It takes time to think through the compositions. It’s fun when we do tours and things get tight, but it’s less of a workshop. It’s where I sit back and think a lot and compose a lot, come up with various ideas and then really spend time writing. With SYOTOS, there’s a lot of time spent composing, but it’s like, “Uh oh, we have a gig Sunday and I don’t have any new music.” So I throw together something that’s really a sketch. There’s no pressure - we can play it and it can be a total disaster and I can throw it away. Or it can be the seed of something big. It’s a different compositional and creative process. 
CW: The groove we use on that is danzon, which was the national dance of Cuba back at the turn of the century and a little later. It’s kind of a combination of early jazz, habanera, and various Latin rhythms, so it comes closer to swing than anything probably. It works really well at a slow tempo, so instead of doing something like a cha cha cha, which kind of squares things out, the danzon helps you round those rhythms out a little bit.
LJC: Another tune that I really like is the version of the Mingus tune, “Duke Ellington’s Sound Of Love.” 
CW: That’s a very old tune from the 1930s by Louis Alter. It is a standard; one that isn’t played that much . . . at least up in New York, it’s played a lot more down in New Orleans. It’s lovely. Basically, we started playing that right after Katrina, kind of as a tribute to our New Orleans brethren, all the musicians that were having so much trouble and suffering. This record is not apolitical - that is our little call out to them, saying, “Hey man, we haven’t forgotten you. You’re still very much with us. Your city is not built up yet and that ain’t right.” 
CW: We’ve all matured musically together. It’s really been wonderful to be a part of that development with so many musicians. I can see and hear the benefits that SYOTOS has brought to so many of them, even the ones that have moved on and had other careers. The idea with SYOTOS is developing a creative space for other musicians to shine. It’s not just all about me; it’s always been a group concept like that. We’ve all musically matured and at least from my perspective, we’re all playing on a much higher level than when we started. I don’t think it would have been possible to develop the way that we did without the opportunities that we had with these weekly gigs. It’s been very fulfilling that way. It’s also been very fulfilling getting to know other musicians so intimately and the levels that you do by playing so much together. It is such a rare experience. That intimacy can really lead to music being playing on a very high level, in a way that cannot be accomplished without that intimacy. 
Some musicians carry an innate strength that pushes their musical statements out into the world with an undeniable power. They work as hard as any other musician, and in some cases they work harder; they simply refuse to let their musical ideas be cut short in any way. Many scenarios that would find a regular musician defeated - a lack of work, incompatible collaborators, lifestyle demands - all these situations simply slow this musician’s artistic momentum. When the most imposing developments alter their career, ranging from physical injury to instability, these musicians fight their way back to the top of their potential. The pure power of their inner drive keeps them racing ahead in a strong forward motion, fueled by their dedication an love for music. 
LJC: Early on in SYOTOS, you had an experience with cancer in your face that changed your life; can you tell us a little bit about what happened?
CW: Yea. The nerves don’t come back. Some muscles have regenerated, but the nerves don’t come back. 
CW: Yea, the regular gig started after the cancer bout. That started 19 years ago. It’s funny; I didn’t really want a regular gig. I was still getting my chops back and they called and said, “Can you play on Thursday?” I said “O.K.” and we played. That was right when their band that had been playing on Thursday got fired or something happened. They said, “We need a Thursday band, could you play?” I was like, “Well, alright . . .” never imagining in my life that it would last ten years. It really grew into something.
We actually delayed the record because there were so many tributes coming out and I thought it was in bad taste to try to take advantage commercially the passing of a great musician. So we delayed the release of 
Every artist that aims for a full time professional music career hopes for longevity, a goal that often requires them to broaden their horizons. The best players may find steady work that offers significant financial rewards, but life holds many surprises for any musician. The artist might prefer a different musical focus that doesn’t pay well, requiring them to take more gigs for less money. Lifestyle choices might force the musician to restrict travel or perform certain types of gigs, once again limiting their income. On an ideal level, the musician might simply excel in a broad number of artistic directions, spreading them across the whole musical spectrum. Regardless of the circumstances, musicians need to apply themselves as performers, teachers, learners, band leaders, composers, arrangers, and more to sustain their careers over time. 
CHRIS WASHBURNE: I took a year off and I lived up in a little fishing village - Rockport, Massachusetts. I just did freelance work. I did a lot of contemporary music. I commissioned over twenty new works for trombone, did some concerts in Boston, and was really seriously considering pursuing a career as a soloist in contemporary music. But my dream was always to come to New York City and be a studio musician. I wanted to figure out how to do that, but I had no connections. I knew one person in the music scene down in New York, and that was it. I applied almost on a whim to graduate schools. I was speaking with some of my professors at New England, saying, “I don’t want to get a DMA, but I want to learn more about Latin music.” Steve Cornelius, who was teaching ethnomusicology at New England Conservatory, said to me, “Hey, why don’t you apply to the ethno programs? You could study Latin music in graduate school and then you could play at night.” So I did. 
The way that I broke into the scene in New York was kind of funny. I knew this one guy, he was a Venezuelan musician. I called him when I came to New York, and he gave me one phone number. He gave me the number of Rolando Briceño, who is a saxophone player that played with Mario Bauza and also did a bunch of different stuff. I called him the first day I was in New York - I said, “I’m a trombone player, I just moved to town. I was told to give you a call to see if you know anyone that needs a trombone player.” He said, ” You know, tonight there’s a rehearsal with this Venezuelan singer, El Watusi, and he needs an extra trombone player for the rehearsal, can you make it?” I was like, “Yea, sure.” So I went to Boy’s Harbor, where all the Latin bands rehearse. I got there and there were four trombones sitting there, a salsa band, and this guy on piano. He came up to me and he said, “Hi, I’m Oscar Hernandez, thanks for making it. Can you play lead?” I was like, “Yea,” because I had strong classical chops and had played lead in jazz bands. So he sat me down in the trombone section on lead to check me out and we played. He said, “Hey, you sound great. We’re actually rehearsing for a gig and a recording session. Can you do them this weekend?” So, I did Watusi’s first record. 
LJC: A lot of guys like Ray Barretto and Tito Puente were breaking down to small groups at the time, were you doing much in the way of Latin Jazz outside the dance music world?
CW: The only way that I could do what I’ve done and have these two lives, where one is academic and one is performance, is by breaking down any divides in my head and in my life. I was attracted to ethnomusicology because it was asking bigger questions than just, “What clave is this tune in and how do you play with clave?” That’s a very interesting question in and of itself, and for musicians, it’s vitally important to know these things. But I also wanted to know, “What is the significance of clave in terms of Afro-Cuban identity or Afro-Latin identity? If the clave is supposedly tied to Cuban musical styles, why is it in so many Puerto Rican styles? What is the social significance of that? What does that tell us about our history, and culturally what’s gone on in New York City?” All sorts of things like that. 
The beginning of a person’s musical life certainly can differ from their ultimate career path, a fact that makes the individual interesting and unique. Initial forays into music come from the influence of a person’s community, and the popular forces of the area tend to steer their early musical explorations. With the support of the community, the individual becomes deeply involved in music, searching for more ways to stay connected with music on an intimate level. Learning becomes a mandatory requirement for continued involvement in music, whether through private study, school, or experience. Regardless of the means, musical growth inevitably leads to greater exposure and involvement in new musical concepts. Sometimes these new directions are so intriguing and so inspiring that the musicians starts on a completely path, leading away from their initial musical loves. After years of traveling in new musical directions, the artist looks drastically different than the young person at the beginning of the journey, but the voyage results in a well rounded and insightful artist. 
CHRIS WASHBURNE: I started playing trombone in the school band program when I was in fifth grade. They had really strong marching band and concert band type of stuff happening. Back then, which is unfortunately not how it is today, everybody just kind of expected to play an instrument. Originally I wanted to play trumpet because it was loud and shiny . . . I still kind of want to play trumpet! There was a night where we went up to the high school and tried out different instruments so we could rent them and get started. I went right to the table with the trumpet and blew into it as hard as I could; I couldn’t get a sound to come out at all. So my mother said, “Do you still want to play trumpet?” I said, “Yea, sure.” She said, “Well, you’ve got to try one more instrument before we leave and before I get the trumpet.” The trombone happened to be at the table next to it, so I picked up the trombone, blew into it, and a sound came out. So the trombone picked me, I didn’t pick the trombone! 
CW: Well, I played some of the music in the jazz bands, and my stepfather was an amateur jazz drummer. He was really enamored with Count Basie and Lionel Hampton. Those bands were traveling when I was a kid, and they would play in clubs throughout the Mid-West. Every time they came into town, we would go. So I listened to that and there’s also a couple of pretty big jazz festivals out in Ohio. I remember when I was in high school, I checked out Miles Davis’ band. I got to see a lot of the top acts. I still was just listening to rock and roll, but I was gravitating towards jazz just because I could see where my place as a musician could be. There was already a path forged. I was a big fan of the rock group Chicago because of James Pankow. South Side Johnny had a trombone section, and even the Stones would have a horn section sometimes. It was the notion that I could play in a rock band like that and it would be fun, but it was kind of a marginalized position, like a background singer. That’s not really what I wanted to do.
I was very, very lucky - the University of Wisconsin is a realitively small music program, and there weren’t enough jazz trombonists to fill out the jazz bands. So they had to pull from those classical players. I seriously was trying to practice to be an orchestral player; towards the end I started gravitating more towards chamber music. It was just this idea of sitting in a section - it’s really fun and if you’re in a good section in a good orchestra, it’s a real thrill and you play wonderful music. But again, it’s only from Beethoven on that you get to do anything. Classical music goes back way farther, there’s very few concertos, it’s only in the twentieth century stuff that you can really pursue anything. So I found it limiting. 
CW: When I finished my undergrad, I took a year off, and I was trying to figure out what to do. Les Thimmig told me that the only program that he was aware of was at New England, which was the Third Stream program, where you could be in as many worlds as you wanted and no one’s going to blink an eye. Third Stream is a term that was coined by Gunther Schuller, back when he took over the New England Conservatory in the sixties, to refer specifically to contemporary classical composers that were using jazz in their works and vice versa. Not just using it superficially or not just borrowing, but really trying to delve deep inside the traditions and come up with something new, thus a third stream. So yes, typically, that’s what that word meant.
It was really like an intense ear-training program, but you’d be training to hear musics from different cultures and around the world. It just was wonderful for me in terms of Latin music, because I started playing it at the same time. I approached Latin music the way that I approached learning jazz where I was transcribing solos, I was memorizing tunes, and I was trying to sound exactly like Jose Rodrigues and Barry Rogers. I was trying to loose Chris Washburne for a while and then reemerge with my version of their influences and my own voice. It’s exactly what I did when I started playing jazz - learning J.J. Johnson solos and Slide Hampton solos and Frank Rosalino solos and then trying to come up with something new. That’s why I went with the Third Stream approach, and again, it allowed me to do both jazz and classical. I played in the chamber orchestra, I played in the jazz band, I studied with George Russell, and I took private lessons with Bob Moses, the drummer. It’s really one of the more creative music departments in the country, still. 
There’s a lot of great Latin Jazz out there, but sometimes an album hits you so hard, it just leaves you with one question - why haven’t I been listening to this artist constantly? Many musical factors might pull your attention into a stranglehold - it might be instrumental virtuosity, improvisational daring, cleverly structured compositions, or even a combination of several musical pieces. A clear definition often escapes your understanding; you just know that this musician has got something that you need to hear in large quantities. In some cases, you’ve heard the artist before, and you’ve probably even enjoyed their work. This one recording puts everything in a new perspective though. Once you go back through all the artist’s previous recordings, things just sound different, and you spend a great deal of time looking at the music through a new light. Listening to pianist Hilario Durán’s recent release, 
and 
. Durán made a permanent move to Canada in 1998, becoming an important piece of the Toronto music scene. His albums 
and 
made big waves, with the later receiving a JUNO Award for Best Contemporary Jazz Album. In 2006 Durán expanded his concept into a big band, creating the album 
, which featured Paquito D’Rivera, Horacio “El Negro” Hernandez, and more. His current release, 
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