Jul 9, 2024 11:35 AM
Trumpeter, Educator Jim Rotondi Dies at 61
Jim Rotondi, a renowned hard-bop trumpeter, composer and educator, died suddenly on July 7 at a hospital in France. He…
Charlie Sepúlveda is planning to restart the Luquillo Beach Jazz Festival on a larger scale.
(Photo: Gulnara Khamatova)The morning after Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico in 2017, trumpeter Charlie Sepúlveda looked around his town of Luquillo and saw mostly destruction. His reflections on that disaster come through on “Estampas,” which brings together jazz and his island’s danza, aiming to preserve what may become lost as the song’s title, translated as “Pictures,” denotes. The track appears on Sepúlveda’s 2021 album This Is Latin Jazz (HighNote), but his musical conservation work includes more than composition.
This album is part of Sepúlveda’s preservation efforts. Last autumn, he completed building the C-Note, a multipurpose jazz club in his hometown. Sepúlveda is also restarting the Luquillo Beach Jazz Festival for Memorial Day weekend. These were all undertaken while he promoted This Is Latin Jazz, which was recorded at New York’s Dizzy’s Club just before the 2020 pandemic shutdown. So Sepúlveda knows all about urgent response.
“I’m just a trumpet player and bandleader, but never handled this aspect of the business,” Sepúlveda said from his car while heading to one more business meeting. “But I have a great crew, and I’m eager. I just want to play.”
The C-Note is a three-floor building overlooking the ocean. Currently, the music room can fit about 50 people, but Sepúlveda is knocking down walls for more performance space and constructing a recording studio as well as a restaurant. His goal is build to a place that’s similar to where he worked when he lived in New York during the late 1980s and early 1990s, such as the Blue Note. He added that organizations like Jazz at Lincoln Center serve as a model for his club’s educational mission.
“I’m planning to start with a trumpet workshop, then saxophones,” said Sepúlveda, an experienced educator who taught at the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico for 16 years. “We would get a group of students to see music for free, and that would be for children of the town.”
While Sepúlveda is making room for bigger audiences at the C-Note, his plan for restarting the Luquillo Beach Jazz Festival means organizing on a larger scale. The event started in 2013 and typically brought in about 5,000 people. The hurricane curtailed the festival and COVID struck just as he was hoping to bring it back. None of which is blocking his determination this year as he speaks with potential performers and sponsors.
This Is Latin Jazz brought vital guests to join Sepúlveda’s sextet, The Turnaround. Randy Brecker, Steve Turre and Miguel Zenón appear on a few tracks and lift his robust tone. Throughout, the bandleader reinforces the ties between core Cuban and Puerto Rican idioms — danza, plena, bomba — and jazz. He also adapts a vamp from his cousin Eddie Palmieri’s “La Libertad Logico” for the melody to his “Liberty.”
“What I try to do is combine the two musics without losing elements of hard-bop and not losing the element of Latin music,” Sepúlveda said. “If you play Latin and then change to play hard-bop or bebop it has to swing both ways.”
Sepúlveda knows that now’s the time to carry that message forward.
“Almost everybody’s gone — Cal Tjader, Mongo Santamaría,” Sepúlveda said. “We have to maintain this music, that’s the purpose. Even though it’s a little more modern — with modern harmonies — it has the essential roots of the music. And we have to pass it on to other generations.” DB
Jim Rotondi was acclaimed for his wide, round trumpet tone, remarkable virtuosity and assured swing.
Jul 9, 2024 11:35 AM
Jim Rotondi, a renowned hard-bop trumpeter, composer and educator, died suddenly on July 7 at a hospital in France. He…
Charles Lloyd, seen here at the 2024 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, makes DownBeat Poll history!
Jul 11, 2024 12:23 PM
The incomparable Charles Lloyd swept the 72nd Annual DownBeat Critics Poll, becoming the first artist ever to earn…
“Being president of Blue Note has been one of the coolest things that ever happened to me,” Was said. “It’s a gas to serve as one of the caretakers of that legacy.”
Jun 4, 2024 12:21 PM
Sitting with Don Was is a comfortable and unhurried exercise. He may seem slightly reserved at first, but ideas and…
“She reminds me of my childhood and makes we want to cry,” Cécile McLorin Salvant, pictured here with writer Ashley Kahn, said of Dianne Reeves.
Jun 11, 2024 12:31 PM
Italy’s Umbria Jazz Winter is one of those rare annual festivals that not only coincides with a major holiday —…
Maria Schneider said of Decades, her new compilation release: “I just wanted to create something, put it in a beautiful box and say, ‘Look at what we did.‘”
Jun 18, 2024 12:00 PM
Maria Schneider opened the sleek black box and placed it on a coffee table in her Manhattan apartment. Inside lay the…