Because Madison still isn’t a real city, the
legendary trumpet player Arturo Sandoval hasn’t played here since his pre-New
Year’s Eve show at Overture Hall in 2007. He returns, to the Wisconsin Union
Theater’s Shannon Hall, on Friday, October 25, with special guest Jane Monheit,
who last sang here, as far as I know, exactly a decade ago. The show’s billed
as “Ultimate Duets.”
Since these artists rarely come
through town, we have a lot of catching up to do. Here’s a summary: In 2009 Monheit
(who ex-Village Voice jazz critic
Gary Giddens had once called a “wannabe”) was just stepping into the big
leagues with her ninth album, The Lovers,
the Dreamers, and Me, an eclectic set of standards and mainstream pop. Her
most recent record – her eighteenth, recorded (with Nicholas Payton on trumpet)
in 2016, when she was 39 – is The
Songbook Sessions, a set of tunes from Ella Fitzgerald’s repertory. And on
the snowy night of his last Madison appearance Sandoval was touring his fourth
Grammy winner, Rumba Palace. Today
he’s got ten gilded gramophones, and in 2013 President Barack Obama – oh, how
we miss him! – awarded Sandoval, who fled his native Cuba in 1990 while on tour
with Dizzy Gillespie, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Sandoval, 70, might be the busiest
player in the music business. When I interviewed him in 2007 he was in a cab,
rushing to the Miami airport. This time
around we’d had a phone interview set up for an early afternoon slot a couple
of weeks ago, but when I dialed his number at the appointed hour he didn’t pick
up. I left a voicemail and contacted his manager, who promised to try again –
though the very versatile trompetista, who’s written at least twelve film
scores, was still tied up in a recording session somewhere in Hollywood.
As I was emailing with his manager,
a text came in from Sandoval – he was in a cab on his way to LAX to catch a
flight to Croatia. From there he was heading to Brasil; Madison is his first
stop after his international tour. “I have a couple of minutes now,” said my
iPhone screen.
“OK,” I texted back, “I’m calling.”
And that’s how I grabbed another interview-on-the-fly with the maestro.
CulturalOyster: Ultimate Duets, recorded last year, is
disc number 44 for you. I thought it was
an album, but it turns out to be a bigger, ongoing concept. What led you to the idea of doing duets?
Sandoval: Oh,
because I never did such a thing before. I thought it’s about time to do
something different. I love that almost all of my albums are different – I like
to keep my sound as fresh as possible.
CulturalOyster:
The duos on the album are with singers I might not expect you to team up with,
but I’m a big fan of some of them, Juan Luis Guerra, Stevie Wonder – but the
tune that really got me was where you do “Quimbara” with the ghost of Celia
Cruz. What did it mean to you to do that?
Sandoval: We
extracted only her voice from a live performance she had done. We put
everything else – a new big band arrangement – on top of that. You know, I love
her. I had the opportunity to play with her a few times. She was a beautiful
human being. I felt like if I wanted to do duets she had to be part of it, she
had to be there.
CulturalOyster: You’re
teaming up with Jane Monheit for the Madison show.
Sandoval: She’s
going to sing some of the songs from the Ultimate
Duets album. She’s an excellent singer – very musical, very professional,
and I really enjoy working with her. We’ve done duets tours a few times already
– this will be the third or fourth time.
CulturalOyster: As
far as I know you and Jane haven’t recorded together yet, and there’s no
substantial video of the two of you together on YouTube that I can find – so
how do you two sound together?
Sandoval: Oh, I
prefer to hear the opinion of the audience – my opinion is irrelevant, it’s
what people get from it that counts. I hope you will enjoy it. Listen, we are
already at the airport, I have to go now.
CulturalOyster:
Maestro, thanks for taking my call.
_________________________ interview
by SK
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