Arturo Sandoval

For The Record...

Born November 6, 1949, in Artemis, Cuba; defected from Cuba, 1990; father an auto mechanic; married; wife's name, Marianela; child: Arturin. Education: Studied classical trumpet at Cuban National School of Arts, 1964. Jazz trumpeter and flugelhornist; while in Cuban military, member of Orquesta Cubana de Musica Moderna; cofounded band Irakere with Paquito D'Rivera and Churcho Valdes, 1973; recorded and toured with Dizzy Gillespie; started own orchestra, 1981. Awards: Elected to Cuba's National Hit Parade as best instrumentalist, 1982-84; named by Cuban Ministry of Culture to highest professional school; Grammy Awards for best Latin jazz performance, for Danzon, 1995, and Hot House, 1998; Emmy Award, outstanding music composition for a miniseries, movie, or special, for the soundtrack to the HBO movie of his life, For Love or Country: The Arturo Sandoval Story, 2001. Addresses: Management—Melody Lisman, Turi's Music Enterprises Inc., 6701 Collins Ave., Regency #1, Miami Beach, FL 33141, phone: 305-866-6511, fax: 305-866-6516. Record company—Telarc International, 23307 Commerce Park Rd., Cleveland, OH 44122. Website—Arturo Sandoval Official Website: http://www.arturosandoval.com. E-mail: arthorn@bellsouth.net.

Trumpeter, flugelhornist

The 1994 release Arturo Sandoval Plays Trumpet Concertos may have marked contemporary jazz label GRP's first foray into classical music. For trumpeter Arturo Sandoval it was a revisiting of the repertoire he had studied as a youth in Cuba. In an article in Billboard Sandoval commented, "I never had a chance to perform with the symphony orchestra because it was always busy playing with Russian violinists and pianists. So I had to wait until I was free to be able to do it."

Born in 1949 in Artemis, a small village in the province of Havana, Cuba, Sandoval started playing at age 13 in the village band, where he learned the basics of music theory and percussion. After playing many instruments, he settled on the trumpet and the flugelhorn. With both, he would eventually dazzle listeners throughout the world.

As a child Sandoval had little exposure to jazz. In a 1993 interview with Down Beat he commented, "The only thing I used to hear was traditional Cuban music, what we call son, which was played by a septet with a trumpet and bongos." But one day a trumpeter in Artemis played Sandoval a Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker record from 1946. Sandoval recalled that upon hearing the album he exclaimed, "‘Oh, man! This is so weird. I don't understand nothing about what they're trying to play.’ But that changed my mind completely. And I'm still trying to find out what they were doing." In 1964 Sandoval entered the Cuban National School of Arts, where he studied classical trumpet for three years.

Drafted into the military in 1971, Sandoval was able to play with the Orquesta Cubana de Musica Moderna. After his discharge, he continued playing in the well-known group Irakere, which he co-founded in 1973 with fellow Cuban greats Paquito D'ivera and Chucho Valdes. The group would continue to play for many years in Havana under Valdes's leadership. Irakere toured North and South America, Europe, and Africa, and Sandoval appeared at festivals in Berlin, Germany; Newport, Rhode Island; Montreux, Switzerland; and Warsaw, Poland, throughout the 1970s. In 1981 Sandoval started his own orchestra and continued touring worldwide.

Sandoval's talent has led him to associations with many great musicians, but perhaps the most important one was with the great bebop trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, a longtime proponent of Afro-Cuban music, whom Sandoval called his "spiritual father," according to Juan Carlos Coto in Down Beat. The two musicians met in Cuba in 1977 when Gillespie was playing impromptu gigs throughout the Caribbean with saxophonist Stan Getz.

According to Coto, Gillespie wanted to visit the black neighborhoods in Cuba where musicians play guaguanco and rumba in the streets. Sandoval offered to take Gillespie around in his car, and only later that night, when he took the stage with Gillespie, did Sandoval reveal himself as a musician. Their friendship remained strong as they continued to play and record together. It was while touring with Gillespie's Grammy Award-winning United Nations Orchestra in Rome that Sandoval requested political asylum.

Gillespie's greatest tribute to Sandoval was also perhaps the most embarrassing for Sandoval. Gillespie often asked Sandoval for trumpet lessons, Sandoval recalled in Down Beat. "I'd say, ‘Oh, Diz, please,’ and he'd say, ‘Come on, man.’ So I would give him some exercises and advice about embouchure and things, and he would come back and say, ‘You know, man, that worked.’ Nobody [could] give Dizzy advice about music, but he asked me about technique, because he didn't have any classical training."

After moving to Havana as a teen, Sandoval was introduced to the playing of Luis Escalante, the first trumpeter in the National Symphony Orchestra. As Sandoval told Down Beat, Escalante played classical, jazz, and Cuban music. "I never forgot that, and it has been my goal all my life to play as many things as I can. I don't want any sign on me that says ‘jazz’ or ‘salsa’ or ‘blues.’ I'm a musician, man."

Sandoval's performances, according to Czyz, exhibited "faultless technique, beautiful, clear trumpet tone, an uncanny precision and good chops." In addition, Down Beat, reviewing a 1983 performance, pointed out the trumpeter's "machine-gun flurries, squawks, smears, growls and flutters." At the same performance, according to Down Beat, Sandoval explained in Spanish that the piano had been his first love, and then proceeded to play a long, polished piano solo. Later, he played timbales, scat-sang, and twanged the jaw harp, before picking up a shekere, an African calabash rattle, for a percussion interlude that almost stopped the show.

Remained Tied to Cuban Roots Despite Defection
Since his defection from Cuba in 1990, Sandoval has lived with his family in Miami, Florida, where he prizes, above all, his creative freedom. Miami has served as a vital connection for Sandoval to his past, a place where he can be near his culture and food, what Cubans call El Cubaneo. Sandoval was granted U.S. citizenship in November of 1998, after a three-year struggle with the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Sandoval's desire to keep close ties with his Cuban heritage is reflected in his career moves. Although he has played with musicians all over the world, including jazz stars Billy Cobham, Woody Herman, Woody Shaw, Herbie Hancock, John McLaughlin, Jon Faddis, and Stan Getz, as well as symphony orchestras and military bands, one of the first things he did after moving to Florida was to form a band. "I like to work with the same people and have a repertoire," he told Down Beat. "I don't like to play with them now and then, inventing things randomly. I like to work with musicians who can create a wide range of sounds and who like to play a lot of different things." After his arrival in the United States, Sandoval performed on the soundtrack for Robert Redford's film Havana with his fellow exile and former associate, saxophonist Paquito D'Rivera, and on pop singer Gloria Estefan's Into the Light. Whether playing with percussionist Tito Puente at the Village Gate in New York City or in the concert halls of Europe, Sandoval has proven himself first and foremost as a musician of the world.

In 2005 Sandoval released the concert album Live at the Blue Note, which earned him the Billboard Latin music award for Latin jazz album of the year. The award seemed to reinvigorate Sandoval's career, as he followed the release of the Blue Note album with the 2007 release Rumba Palace. The latter album is of note for containing nine self-composed tracks and a cover of "Guarachando" by Felipe Lamoglia, who also arranged and co-produced the album. The lyrics for "El Huracan Del Caribe" were written by Sandoval as well. The album's title is the name of one of two nightclubs owned and operated by Sandoval in southern Florida. In an interview conducted while he was touring to support the album, he discussed his pleasure at how the album sounded, reiterated his passion for the jazz that he discovered through Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker, and praised the creative freedom he had experienced in the United States. "I'm so glad to be in the United States," he said. "When I come home from a tour, I kiss the ground here as soon as I get off the plane. … We have all the freedom in the world to do what we want to do."

Selected discography
To a Finland Station, Pablo, 1983.
Breaking the Sound Barrier, Chicago Caribbean Arts, 1983.
Tumbaito, Messidor, 1986.
A.S. Plays for the Pandas, 1987.
No Problem, 1987.
Straight Ahead, Jazz House, 1988.
(Contributor) Havana (soundtrack), GRP, 1990.
(With others) Flight to Freedom, GRP, 1991.
(Contributor) Gloria Estefan, Into the Light, Epic, 1991.
(With others) I Remember Clifford, GRP, 1992.
Dream Come True, GRP, 1993.
Arturo Sandoval Plays Trumpet Concertos, GRP, 1994.
(With others) Danzon, GRP, 1994.
The Latin Train, GRP, 1995.
Swingin, GRP, 1996.
Just Music, Jazz House, 1996.
The Best of Arturo Sandoval, Milan/Latino, 1997.
Hot House, N2K Music, 1998.
Americana, N2K Music, 1999.
Ronnie Scott's Jazz House, DCC Jazz, 2000.
L.A. Meetings, Cubop, 2001.
My Passion for the Piano, Columbia, 2002.
Trumpet Evolution, Crescent Moon, 2003.
From Havana, With Love, West Wind, 2003.
Live at the Blue Note, Messidor, 2005.
Rumba Palace, Telarc, 2007.
Arturo Sandoval and the Latin Jazz Orchestra, Malanga Music, 2007.

Sources
Periodicals
Billboard, March 19, 1994; June 10, 1995; November 28, 1998.
Brass Bulletin, number 65, 1989; number 71, 1990.
Crescendo International, August 1989.
Down Beat, November 1983; July 1991; June 1992; June 1993; June 1995.
Jazz, May 1984; December 1985.
Jazz Forum, number 92, 1985.
Jazz Journal International, February 1990.
Jazz Podium, November 1990.
Jazz Times, December 1983.
Metro Times (Detroit, MI), August 1, 1993.

Online
All Music Guide, http://www.allmusic.com (November 8, 2007).
Arturo Sandoval Official Website, http://www.arturosandoval.com (February 26, 2002).
Grammy Awards, http://www.grammy.com (Febraury 26, 2002).
VH1.com, artists.vh1.com/vh1/artists (Febraury 26, 2002).
Additional information for this profile was obtained in a telephone interview with Arturo Sandoval in June of 2007.

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Biography

A blazing, technically flawless trumpeter from Cuba, Arturo Sandoval has been dazzling audiences all over the world with his supercharged tone and bop-flavored flurries way up in the trumpet's highest register. In slower numbers, he sports a golden, mellow tone on the flügelhorn, marked with a sure, subtle sense of swing. Apparently he is capable of playing anything, proving it more than once by tackling classical repertoire as well as jazz in the same concert, and he has enough curiosity to search far beyond his Cubop base for repertory. Yet he often lets his desire to please the crowd with high-note displays get in the way of musical values, and he has yet to make a great record that can stand with those trumpet giants that have preceded him.

The son of an auto mechanic, Sandoval took up the classical trumpet at 12 and was enrolled in the Cuban National School of the Arts at 15, studying with a Russian classical trumpeter. Early in the 1970s, he became one of the founding members of the Orquesta Cubana de Musica Moderna, which by 1973 had evolved into the Afro-Cuban, rock-influenced band Irakere. Sandoval met his idol Dizzy Gillespie in 1977, who promptly became a mentor and colleague, playing with Sandoval in concerts in Europe and Cuba and later featuring him in the United Nation Orchestra. After recording an album with David Amram, Havana/New York, and a couple of high-profile Irakere albums on Columbia, Sandoval left the group in 1981 to tour with his own band and record in Cuba. Occasionally, the Castro government would allow Sandoval to appear in various international jazz festivals and with orchestras like the BBC Symphony and Leningrad Philharmonic. Though he chafed under a regime that restricted his touring, Sandoval bided his time until he could get his wife and son out of Cuba, and only then, in July 1990 during a long European tour, did he defect at the American Embassy in Rome, settling in Florida.

Signing with GRP, Sandoval's first American album, appropriately titled Flight to Freedom, demonstrated his versatility in several idioms, and he toured with his own high-energy Afro-Cuban group in the 1990s. Hot House followed in 1998, and a year later he returned with Americana. L.A. Meetings appeared in spring 2001. For 2003's Trumpet Evolution, Sandoval selected material from his favorite horn players. Since that time, he has released a handful of recordings including Live at the Blue Note in 2005 and Arturo Sandoval & the Latin Jazz Orchestra and Rumba Palace, both in 2007. In 2010, Sandoval released his first album for the Concord Jazz imprint, a collection of ballads entitled Time for Love. ~ Richard S. Ginell, Rovi

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