January

Nicaraguan composer and pianist Donald Vega’s hard-luck story

The character’s story we are going to talk about today is extremely fascinating, since the challenges he has had to endure did not prevent him from becoming the great musician he is now. We are talking about Donald Vega and the inspiration he is for those who believe their dreams and goals impossible to achieve.

Donald and his piano — Nicaraguan composer and pianist Donald Vega and his piano

Donald Vega and his interesting story

Donald Vega is a composer and jazz pianist born in Masaya, Nicaragua, whose family has had musicians for several generations. His grandfather, Don Alberto Gutiérrez Laguna was a composer and multi-instrumentalist and had a love for music that was passed down through his children as they grew older. This was the case of his uncle, Tránsito Gutiérrez, who was honored in 2022 at the Rubén Dario National Theater for his great artistic career.

Tránsito was one of the great inspirations for his nephew to become interested in music and play the piano at the tender age of three, guided only by his ear. His grandfather Alberto, seeing this, wanted to teach his grandson Donald to read music and prepare him as well as possible for the future. As part of this preparation, he attended the conservatory to study the greatest exponents of classical music such as Beethoven, Chopin and Mozart.

Unfortunately, his parents quickly understood that the country was not safe for their son to pursue his dreams.

Challenges of adolescence

At that time, 15- and 16-year-olds were forced to join the Nicaraguan army, so his mother left the Central American country to find a way to get him and his siblings out of there and give them a better future far from armed conflict. Something that struck him at that time was that there were many wakes in his neighborhood where the body was not even present, but some parts of the military uniform such as the helmet or boots. This led his mother to want to get her son out of the country, so she got him a visa to go to Mexico so he could cross the land border into the United States with his godmother.

Donald and Poncho — Donald Vega when playing with Poncho Sanchez some years ago

His first stop was Los Angeles, where he joined his mother and applied for political asylum. At that moment, he did not have any resources to buy instruments, but he received a scholarship at a conservatory where he got much support to train properly despite the want of money.

While in school, a music teacher heard him play the piano and invited him to participate in a national music competition in Los Angeles where he won first place and was given 5000 dollars and a piano as a gift. It can be said that this was his official start in the world of music, so he is very grateful to have participated in the competition.

Sometime later, he received a scholarship to study at the Manhattan School of Music in New York and the Juilliard School of Music, of which he is now a music teacher.

Golden Striker Trio

The opportunity to belong to the Golden Striker Trio is described by Donald as incredible, since it has been a fascinating experience with an interesting beginning.

It all started when a Ron Carter’s student at Juilliard, with whom Donald made a recording together in New Orleans to be shown to Professor Carter to determine what aspects needed to be improved. Carter was so fascinated with Donald that he asked to meet him and talk with him to learn more about his work.

When they met, the professor proposed the artist to watch him live in one of his performances. After that, he had him come to his home to tell him that he was giving him the opportunity to participate in his Golden Striker Trio as a pianist, since the previous one wanted to dedicate more time to his own group. Donald has been working with Carter and his group for more than 15 years and is very grateful for what he has achieved and learned.

Donald, Ron, and Russell — Donald Vega, maestro Ron Carter, and guitarist Russell Malone from Golder Striker Trio

Backcountry Jazz

Backcountry Jazz is a non-profit organization that seeks to support talented youngsters with limited resources to achieve their dreams in the music industry. Donald has become part of this noble initiative motivated by the teachings of his parents, who have always told him to be generous and give of his time to others. It is for this same reason that he also teaches at the Juilliard School of Music, since sharing his time and knowledge with others gives him an incredible satisfaction.

Due to the situation he himself experienced with lack of money and instruments in order to get ahead in his passion, he understands perfectly how children and young people who do not have the resources to be successful with music feel, so he seeks to give them a hand through this organization and his mentoring.

Grammy Nomination for As I Travel

Donald talks about ”As I Travel” as a description of the path he had to pass to become the musician he is today. He was also inspired by his journey across more than 44 countries he has visited with different musicians including, of course, Ron Carter.

The whole album is inspired by his experiences. An example of that is ”Baila! Dance Like No One’s Watching”, which is inspired by the happiness of those around him, especially his son, his biggest inspiration for writing the song. It is a celebration of life, family and his countrymen in Nicaragua.

Donald and Ruben — Rubén Blades and Donald Vega posing for the camera

Another example worthy of mention is ”I Know I can Fly”, which was inspired by the host of challenges he faced upon arrival to the United States and the whole process of adapting to the country, its lifestyle, its climate and its language. It was also inspired by his determination to succeed despite all the challenges he faced along the way.

Latin jazz and mambo trumpeter Jonathan Powell and his great collaborations

Trumpeter Jonathan Powell is one of the many examples that show how much so many American artists have looked at Latin music over the last few years, so this is a great opportunity to know one of the many stories about what our heritage has achieved in this country.

Jonathan playing — Musician Jonathan Powell playing the trumpet live

Instruments that caught Jonathan’s attention

An important fact to remember is that Jonathan’s parents were musicians. His father played the electric bass and his mother played the cello, so he obviously has a lot of talent to get from. However, his interest in music turned to a slightly different way.

The instrument through which the artist is best known today is the trumpet due to his great skill at handling it, but it is not the only instrument he has learned to play. He also plays the trombone, the tuba and other bass instruments, but does not have the same fascination with them as with the trumpet.

His interest in music began when he was in high school and became part of a few student bands, resulting in more than 30 years of musical career.

Jonathan’s academic training

Most of what Jonathan has got to learn comes from the experience he has gained through his work, although he does not devalue formal music education. In fact, he attended the North Carolina School of the Arts and studied with that institution’s best teachers in the area of classical music.

When he turned 19, he made the decision to move to New York, where he has lived ever since. While there, he did not care as much about further studying music, but gaining as much experience as he could through practice.

Jonathan recording — Jonathan Powell recording music for his album ”Mambo Jazz Party”

Interest in Latin music

Although Jonathan’s interest in music began with the classical genre, his move to Florida made him seek other horizons. In Florida, he and his brother Jeremy began to make contact with radio stations that played Latin genres and this led them to meet the Garcia-Herreros brothers, Juan and Victor, who are two very experienced musicians in Latin jazz, but also in Latin music in general. The boys returned to Florida after studying at Berklee College of Music and started a band with Jonathan and Jeremy until they had to move to New York.

When Jonathan graduated from high school and also moved to New York, he was reunited with Juan and Victor who offered him to join their orchestra La Creación, with which he played every weekend for several years. This would be what the young musician would describe as his first real experience in the world of music, leading him to participate in the orchestra La Excelencia and to play with Arturo O’Farrill and Eddie Palmieri.

Learning from other great artists

Just as Jonathan has played with O’Farrill and Palmieri, he has also been able to share the stage with Miguel Zenón, Tito Puente Jr, Oscar Hernández from the Spanish Harlem Orchestra, Israel Tanenbaum and many others.

Despite not having received much academic training, the opportunity to have played with the aforementioned music stars and many more really taught him many things that he would not have learnt in any educational institution. He assures that from whom he learned the most was Maestro Palmieri, since the legendary pianist is very generous when it comes to sharing his knowledge with whoever needs it, thanks to his extensive experience in this rich world.

‘‘Palmieri has been around since the fifties and sixties and has played with the most important artists of his generation, so he has a lot to teach. People have no idea how much he knows and how deep his knowledge on music is,” said the trumpeter about one of his great living inspirations.

However, as a trumpet player, another of his great inspirations was Puerto Rican arranger, composer and producer Juancito Torres for the way he played, since he considers it very special and unique compared to many other musicians.

Jonathan and Palmieri — Maestro Eddie Palmieri and Jonathan Powell smiling for the camera

Nu Shanga

Eager to manage his own musical group, Jonathan gives the public a very interesting proposal which he baptized Nu Sangha, inspired by Tibetan language, since these two words together mean ”new community”. With this group, he had much more freedom when choosing how he wanted to address each rhythm and wanted to give a much more modern approach to the type of jazz he had been playing through electronic elements few times used before.

In the case of Nu Sangha, he enjoyed everything he did professionally and was able to experiment with everything he had learned so far in creative ways, leading him to release the albums ”Transcend” and ”Beacons of Light”.

Mambo Jazz Party

In Jonathan’s own words, Mambo Jazz Party, the artist’s most recent musical work, the entire process of recording it took more than 10 years, since that was the time taken to create all the music that appears in the record material. He started the creation in 2014 and it was not until 2022 that Jonathan added the final details such as some missing vocals, but he assures that all the time spent on the album was worth it.

On the album, we can find Jimmy Bosch, guitarist Nir Felder, flutist Itai Kriss, pianist Manuel Valera, vocalist Ariadne Trujillo, singer Anthony Almonte and many other great artists who embellish this creation.

In other interviews, Jonathan has described this album as a mix of traditional salsa and Latin jazz elements, electronic sounds and a lot of spiritualism, which can summarize very well what this musical work represents for Jonathan Powell.

Mambo Jaszz Party by Jonathan — Cover of the album ”Mambo Jazz Party” by Jonathan Powell

Eddie Muñíz continues to head Swing Sabroso

From this space, every day we are much more aware of the unusual wealth of Latin talent that makes up the New York’s music scene, which continues to show many artists and orchestras that do not surrender to high competition and give their best to earn their place and stand out from the rest.

This is the case of Ray Rodríguez & Swing Sabroso, whose current leader, Eddie Muñiz, gives us a broader picture of the way any artist should go to keep his name alive in public taste and avoid getting lost in the large artistic catalog where there is a lot of content to choose from.

Swing Sabroso leader Eddie — This is current Swing Sabroso bandleader Eddie Muñiz

Talented musician Eddie Muñiz’s beginnings in the world of music

Eddie, who was born in Brooklyn, USA, but communicates in excellent Spanish, had his first approaches to music in elementary school at the age of 13, when he played in several classical music and jazz groups to keep improving in these arts and find his style until he had his big break.

This opportunity came when the young man turned 17 years old, at which point he had his professional career in music with a group of friends, with whom he stayed for two or three years. After that, his next group was called ”Herencia Latina” whose director was the talented Ray Rodriguez and would become the starting point of his current orchestra Swing Sabroso.

After leaving Herencia Latina, he joined Ismael’s conjunto for four years and subsequently played with Conjunto Clasico, Ray de La Paz, La Sonora Matancera, Tony Vega and many more.

About eight years later, the group did not go ahead and Ray moved to New Jersey, but as it happens, Eddie had to do the same for work reasons. Back then, Ray started a group he called Ray Rodriguez y Swing Sabroso, which invited Eddie to join the orchestra in 2000. 24 years later, it is he himself who moved such an ambitious project forward after Ray’s sad loss from the cancer on April 17, 2016.

Swing Sabroso

By the time Ray was in good health, the orchestra released two albums, one in 2005 and another in 2015. When the bandleader began to sicken, he knew he could not give the group the attention it required, so he asked Eddie to take the helm of the ship in his place as long as the group was only called Swing Sabroso, nothing else.

At that time, the group only had two trumpets and a trombone, but Eddie was gradually enlarging it and adding more instruments to make the sound fuller. Being in total control of the orchestra, the artist released the album ”Swing Sabroso, Mejor Que Nunca” in the year 2022, when they played everything that the three albums included.

Cover of the album ”Swing Sabroso, Mejor Que Nunca”

Currently, Eddie is the oldest of all the Swing Sabrso members, but not for that things are always done his way. In fact, the artist assures that the younger musicians are frequently those who teach him what to do in certain cases.

Far more than a salsa orchestra, Eddie considers that ”Swing Sabroso” is also a family of musicians in which they support each other, despite the regrettable absence of its main founder, the great Ray Rodriguez. Even so many years later, Rodriguez remains the biggest influence on everyone working with Swing Sabroso.

The “Patio de Tula”

Latin America / Venezuela / Yaracuy

In the Yaracuy state of Venezuela, where nature reigns, salsa is also danced

Meeting point: El Patio de Tula in the city of San Felipe

In the patio of a house in an urbanization in the city of San Felipe, since 2013, there has been a salsa scene that is worthy of recognition. The Patio de Tula is the name of the place, named after the Buena Vista Social Club song: El Cuarto de Tula. It is a space created by music lover and cultural promoter Yony Padilla, inspired by some night spots in Caracas where salsa was danced, such as the emblematic “El Maní es Así en Sabana Grande.”

Apart from having become a point of reference in the Yaracuy state and a meeting place for musicians and passionate salsa lovers, or simply a place to de-stress or have a delicious soup on Sundays, in El Patio de Tula We work diligently to rescue the salsa genre and become an engine of dissemination and a teaching center for the musical education of children, young people and adolescents.

The aim is to create an African-American percussion and dance school, where rhythm and dance are connected in a vital and artistic encounter, through Afro-Caribbean, Afro-Venezuelan percussion workshops and Caribbean dance (salsa) and traditional Venezuelan dance classes. It is important to highlight that this training proposal will be called the Juan Carlos Marín Percussion School, as a living tribute to this musician from Yaracuya, who throughout his career has dedicated himself to the study and research of Latin music and the Yaracuyan drum. It would be well worth it for this project to be taken into account by the region’s cultural organizations to support it.

There are various personalities and groups linked to the salsa and urban music scene that have visited El Patio de Tula, among them we can mention: Edgar “Dolor” Quijada, Orlando “Watussi” Castillo along with Mandinga Star Band, Rodrigo Mendoza, Carlos Hurtado , Jóvito Eduardo, Wilmer Lozano, Edgar “El Abuelo” Rodríguez, Alejandro Mayora, Ray Herrera, David González Jr., Ronald Gómez, Cheo Linares, Aquamarina “La Sirena de la Salsa”, DJ. Augusto Felibertt, Sonora Yambú, Orquesta Salsa Cinco 25, Orquesta Salsa Libre, Orquesta Malecón, the Mango Group, Dame Pa Mátala, Y de Cuba, Sixto Llorente and the Yoruba Andabo Folkloric Group.

Yony Padilla tells us that the salsa scene in the Yaracuy state is on the rise. To do this, they have the Hermandad Salsera de Yaracuy Foundation, which goes hand in hand with El Patio de Tula and at the same time is linked to the radio program Expresion Latina, produced and hosted by Hermes Mejías, and broadcast on the 102.9 FM dial from the central area of San Felipe. Another location that is leading the scene in the area, as Yony tells us, is El Rincón de La Salsa. The large number of musicians and orchestras in Yaracuy are proof of what was said above. Among the musicians the following stand out:

Domingo Bracho – piston trombone
Jorge Yujere – trombone
Harry Ramos –piano
Luis Reyes –percussion
Kendri Siso –percussion
Asael Hernández – piano
Darwin González – Cuban three
Domingo Suárez – percussion
Jimmie Graterol – percussion
Jesús Mieres – percussion
Manuel Mieres –trombone
among others.

The salsa orchestras are: Sonora Yambu, Elegua Son, Yaracuy es Salsa, Orquesta Los Gullet de Marín, where Sonero Orlando “Watussi” Castillo, residing in Milan, Italy, participated as a special guest, Orquesta Trombosis and Escala 78. Among the DJs are: Diego Music, Jesús (Drupy) and Robert Villalobos.

Further, investigating the salsa scene in the states surrounding Yaracuy, we were able to verify with the promoter Padilla that salsa is picking up in Aragua, this, if we measure it by the number of orchestras that he mentioned to us: Orquesta Mangue, Orquesta Primera Clase, La Foca and his Caribbean Sextet, Enmanuel Orchestra, Latinos Orchestra, Mondys Band, Fascination Orchestra (Recognition from the Universidad Bicentenario de Aragua –UBA–), Sono-Star Orchestra and Roberto Monasterios and his Orchestra.

Likewise, in other nearby states there are orchestras such as Malecón, Sazón Latino, Soneros Latinos, Líder, La Nor-Star in Lara; Osaona, Juramento, Sorongo, Batakum, Son Colón, Adrenalina Latina Puerto Cabello in Carabobo; and the Piri Salsa Orchestra in Falcón.

We invite you, therefore, to attend one of the tremendous rumbas that take place in El Patio de Tula, in a family and calm atmosphere, and in the process visit the greenest and most vibrant state of Venezuela. The Exotic Tropical Flora Park, the San Felipe El Fuerte Archaeological Historical Park and the Cumaripa Reservoir Recreational Park are an exemplary example of how, in Yaracuy, nature reigns.

ADDRESS: El Patio de Tula is located on 3rd street, San Rafael, Independencia, Yaracuy state, Venezuela.

Note: We highly appreciate the collaboration received from Yony Padilla and Augusto Felibertt in the preparation of this text.

Maite Hontele in Concert!

Latin America / Venezuela / Caracas

A great musician is someone who can enlighten the stage only with his/her presence, this is the case when Maite Hontele is on stage. Full-house, the stage full of colors and all the audience is ready to dance and enjoy the best rhythm: SALSA!

International Salsa Magazine had the honor to be part of the last concert of Maite Hontele, the incredible dutch trumpeter, in Caracas, Venezuela.

The silence is interrupted with the beautiful sound of a characteristic trumpet playing a melody, the stage gets full of musicians and Maite comes out with the biggest smile that characterize her.

She starts with a speech where she explains how thankful she is for being there, talks a little bit about Colombia, and then the party starts! Two hours full of hits of herself, Oscar d’ Leon, and many other artists, with the performance of her Colombian band by her side.

But let’s get deeper in who is her. Maite Hontelé is a trumpeter who was born in Utrecht, Holland, and was raised with music. Her parents owned a huge collection of salsa and son Cubano, and every day she would listen to Latin music, quite unusual for a Dutch girl. After playing a few years with the local brass band, she decided to become a musician, and studied latin and jazz trumpet at the Conservatory of Rotterdam.

Her first big tour was life-changing. She went to Colombia, the country where she now lives. In 2004, Maite Hontelé toured with the world-famous Buena Vista Social Club. In 2009 Maite launched her first album, Llegó la Mona, a salsa-tribute to Colombian music. This album was made with the purpose to tour more in Colombia. Among the gigs she played was the Medellin Jazz Festival.

That year has been very important for her. Not only did Maite record her first album, she also found the place where she wanted to continue to live and make music. That’s when she decided to move to Medellin, Colombia.

In 2010, she released her second production, Mujer Sonora. The album is focused on oldschool styles such as son and charanga, but also contains some spicy salsa-tracks.

This album was presented at the 2010 North Sea Jazz Festival, and on various international tours. In 2011 and 2012 Maite toured many countries with her band, and was a guest with Ruben Blades, Yuri Buenaventura, Issac Delgado, Diego Galé (DVD-recording), Juan Carlos Coronel, Oscar D’León, and many others.

Her 3rd album, Déjame Asi, was released in April 2013. She is currently touring Europe and Latin America.

“My Outlaw Loredo is the most elegant gig-bag in the universe. A perfect match for me!” Maite Hontelé

The show ends with the best energy. Maite is not only an amazing trumpeter, but also a great singer and composer. We are glad to be part of his musical journey.