Cuban trumpet star Arturo Sandoval has called Los Angeles home for the past 15 years, but as of December he’ll effectively be an honorary citizen of the Bay Area.
Adding to an already voluminous shelf of honors that includes the Presidential Medal of Freedom and an Emmy Award for his score for HBO’s film about his life, “For Love or Country: The Arturo Sandoval Story,” he’s part of the Kennedy Center Honors class of 2024.
After defecting from Cuba while on a European tour with Dizzy Gillespie’s United Nations Orchestra in 1989 he went on to become a U.S. citizen a decade later. In addition to Sandoval, this year’s celebration of American cultural prowess at Washington D.C.’s Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts features a conspicuously Northern California contingent, with Francis Ford Coppola, the Grateful Dead (represented by the band’s surviving founders Mickey Hart, Bill Kreutzmann, Phil Lesh and Bob Weir), and Bonnie Raitt.
“It’s a huge honor,” said Sandoval, who performs Saturday with Symphony San Jose at the Mountain Winery in Saratoga. Coincidentally, Raitt also plays the Mountain Winery Sept. 20-21 before their paths cross again in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 8.
“I’ve met Bonnie Raitt, but I’m excited to meet Francis Ford Coppola,” he said. “They haven’t told us who will be performing for us, it’s a surprise, but they said don’t even think about playing.”
Sandoval’s “Symphony Under the Stars” performance with Symphony San Jose represents the ongoing fulfillment of his American dream. In Cuba, where he was a founding member of innovative Orquesta Cubana de Música Moderna and its groundbreaking 1973 spinoff, the Afro-Cuban jazz/rock band Irakere, choosing to play jazz put him at odds with the communist government.
Despite his conservatory training, Sandoval’s commitment to the American art form meant that he “never got the opportunity to play with an orchestra in Cuba,” he said. “My first chance was in the 1980s, with my favorite orchestra in the world, the London Symphony Orchestra. Later on, when I had the budget to do my own album of classical music, Maestro John Williams wrote a trumpet concerto I recorded.”
He’s not delving into his classical book on Saturday’s program. Instead Sandoval is performing his original Cuban compositions and standards with his septet and the symphony. The music often pays tribute to departed friends and family, like his ballad “A Mis Abuelos” and his Gillespie tribute “Dear Diz (Every Day I Think of You).” He also evokes Gillespie’s spirit via the legendary trumpeter’s bebop standards “Groovin’ High” and “A Night in Tunisia.”
While designed to showcase Sandoval’s brass prowess, the program provides space for other musical facets with several vocal features, like the Charlie Chaplin gem “Smile.” The arrangements are by Sandoval and the great French film composer Michel Legrand.
The fact that he’s collecting another lifetime achievement award doesn’t mean that Sandoval is coasting creatively. Bay Area audiences can judge for themselves as he’s back in town with his band the week after the Kennedy Center celebration, playing five shows at Yoshi’s Dec. 13-15 (the ceremony will be broadcast on CBS Dec. 23).
“What I find most exciting about working with Arturo is that he wants to be current,” said Sandoval’s longtime pianist Max Haymer, a top L.A. player who’s performed widely in the Bay Area with vocalist Jane Monheit. “He’s not resting on his laurels. The man is turning 75. Most people would be slowing down, but he ain’t. He’s striving to keep things fresh and new. That’s really inspiring.”
Which isn’t to say that Sandoval wants to keep delivering the same blazing tempos and stratospheric notes that made him such a fierce player in earlier decades. He’s in the midst of recording a session with strings featuring a Budapest orchestra that shows off his gleaming lyricism and gift for shaping ballad phrases.
“I’ve been playing the opposite, high notes and pyrotechnical, and this is a completely different approach,” he said.
Sandoval has been down this road before, most notably on his acclaimed 2010 Concord album “A Time For Love,” but “this is even more romantic and sweet,” he said. “It’s a very mellow album with beautiful melodies. I’m almost 75 years old. What pleases me the most is playing beautifully.”
Whether he’s shaking the heavens or crooning with the angels, Sandoval has nothing to prove. A jazz lion in winter who’s lost none of his bite, he can roar with absolute authority, but he’s perfectly content to purr a rapturous melody, too.
Contact Andrew Gilbert at jazzscribe@aol.com.
ARTURO SANDOVAL
With Symphony San Jose
When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday
Where: Mountain Winery, Saratoga
Tickets: $45-$125; www.symphonysanjose.org
