TCU Jazz Ensemble is a hit in Havana

TCU's Curt Wilson conducts members of his Jazz Ensemble and Cuba's National Band, playing together in an outdoor performance in Havana's Plaza de Armas.

Fort Worth, TX

1/24/2011

 
In mid-December, as most students and faculty were finishing up final exams and looking forward to Christmas and winter break, the TCU Jazz Ensemble, directed by Professor Curt Wilson, was traveling to Cuba to perform at the 26th Havana International Jazz Festival. Accompanied by a TCU entourage that included several faculty and staff members, spouses, a parent and a jazz ensemble alum/surgeon, 35 people made the trip.  The TCU musicians are among the first U.S. college groups to perform in Cuba in decades.

Since 1960, the United States government has enforced an embargo against Cuba and limited travel by making it illegal to spend money to visit the island nation. Only certain types of groups and individuals are permitted to go, provided they are approved under a specific license. Although there were some last minute jitters over licensing issues, final confirmation was at last received 10 days before departure date.

The Ensemble flew from DFW to Miami, spent an overnight and boarded a chartered flight the next morning to Havana’s José Marti International Airport. Once through customs and baggage claim, individuals boarded a tour bus that, save for walking, would be their principle means of transportation for the next six days.

The TCU Ensemble performed at the Festival twice, each evening sharing the bill with several other groups from Cuba and Europe. The first performance took place in the Teatro Mella, the 1,500-seat theater that hosted Wynton Marsalis’ five-day residency in October. The second performance was in the National Theater, a modern-looking structure that borders the expansive Plaza de Revolución.

Each evening’s set list varied a bit but included music by Duke Ellington, Cole Porter, Patrick Williams, Gordon Goodwin, Zequinha Abreu and the theme from the television show "I Love Lucy," that elicited laughs from older members of the audience. Joining the group onstage as featured soloists were clarinet professor Gary Whitman, graduate vocal student Alex Carr, and TCU Orchestra Director Germán Gutiérrez, who sang the Cuban folksong “Guantanamera” with his vocally talented wife, Silvia. Both performances were enthusiastically acknowledged with applause, yelps and whistles, and even a few over-excited patrons running and jumping up the theater aisles afterwards.

Since the 1959 revolution, American big bands performing standards from the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s have become a rare occurrence in Cuba.  Enrique Plá, Cuban musician and percussionist from the 1970’s jazz/rock/roots band, Irakere was impressed by the sound of the TCU Ensemble and thought that the group must have rehearsed and played together for years. When told that the ensemble had only been together since September, he was impressed and commented that the performance had been an education for him and the rest of the Cuban audience as they have not heard that particular sound in many years.

The TCU students also enjoyed several cultural exchange opportunities. The first was a joint rehearsal with members of Cuba’s National Band, in which they sat side-by-side and played through several Cuban charts and then switched, having some of the Cuban musicians play along with selections from the TCU set list. At the conclusion of the rehearsal, the players were all smiles and the TCU students handed out much-needed reeds, valve oil and sheet music to the Cubans. The following afternoon, the two groups came together again for an outdoor performance in the picturesque Plaza de Armas. Surrounded by tourists, passing locals and the book stall vendors that work there, Cuban music and American jazz reverberated across the courtyard, bouncing off the facades of the 17th and 18th century buildings that have borne witness to many of Havana’s historic events.

The TCU Ensemble then spent time at Havana’s Conservatorio Municipal de Musica and shared their music with Cuban high school students. The Conservatorio is an arts magnet school where the students are training to be professional musicians. For the first half of the concert, the TCU students sat in the audience and listened to the Cuban students perform a variety of jazz compositions. Next, TCU took the stage and played for the Cuban students, with a few of them invited back onstage by Wilson to solo with the band. Afterwards, there were more smiles and handshakes as TCU School of Music CDs and t-shirts were handed out to the appreciative Cuban students.

Along with several sight-seeing walking tours through Old Havana that revealed ample opportunity to photograph the beautiful and diverse, yet slowly crumbling architecture and classic American autos that fill the streets, a few adventurous souls journeyed outside the city and visited Hemingway’s country house, Finca La Vigia.  

The highlight for many of the TCU students was the final night of the Festival featuring Arturo O’Farrill and the Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra from New York City. O’Farrill and his musicians have incorporated the traditional Afro-Cuban clave rhythms and Latin melodic phrasing into their own complex and virtuoso jazz compositions. Cuban piano legend Chucho Valdés, as well as students from the Conservatorio joined the Orchestra onstage for the final jam that unleashed a torrent of consecutive solos, each more impressive than the last.

It was pure musical spectacle that capped off an impressive evening of jazz and a successful, memorable trip to Cuba.