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TCU JAZZ IN CUBA
By Paul Cortese
In December, as most students and faculty were �nishing up �nal
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
sta� members, spouses, a parent and a jazz ensemble alum-turnedknee
replacement surgeon, 35 people made the trip.
Brad Matheson, the president of Harmony International, was
responsible for Wilson and his group being invited to perform in Cuba.
Harmony International sponsors performing arts tours all over the
world, and Matheson was looking for an ensemble to recommend to
the festival organizers in Havana. After hearing the TCU Jazz Ensemble
perform at the Texas Music Educators Association congress last year,
he was duly impressed and immediately approached Wilson with an
invitation to bring the group to Cuba.
After six months of planning and submitting the necessary applications
and paperwork that the trip required, the U.S. Treasury’s O�ce of
Foreign Assets Control suddenly took issue with the type of license
the group had requested and warned that the legality of the trip was
in question. 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 speci�c license. Fortunately, due to the e�orts of U.S. Rep. Kay
Granger, Sens. John Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchison, Vice Chancellor
Larry Lauer, Lou Hill Davidson and CBS News anchor/TCU alum Bob
Schie�er, the licensing issue was resolved and �nal con�rmation was
received 10 days before the group was scheduled to depart.
The TCU ensemble performed at the festival twice, each evening
sharing the bill with several other groups from Cuba and Europe.
The �rst performance took place in the Teatro Mella, the 1,500-seat
theater that hosted Wynton Marsalis’ recent �ve-day residency in
October. The second performance was in the National Theater, a
modern-looking structure that looks out on the expansive Plaza de
Revolución. Each evening’s set list varied a bit but included music
by Duke Ellington, Cole Porter, Gordon Goodwin, Patrick Williams
and Zequinha de Abreu, as well as the theme from the television
show I Love Lucy, which 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
folk song “Guantanamera” with his vocally talented wife, Silvia. Both
performances were enthusiastically acknowledged with applause,
yelps and whistles, and even a few overexcited patrons running and
jumping up the theater aisles afterward.
The TCU students also enjoyed several cultural exchange opportunities.
The �rst 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 who work there,
Cuban music and American jazz reverberated across the courtyard,
bouncing o� the facades of the 17th- and 18th-century buildings that
have borne witness to many of Havana’s historic events.
The TCU ensemble members 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 �rst half of
the concert, the TCU students sat in the audience and listened to the
Cuban students perform a variety of jazz compositions, observing that
the musical level was quite high. 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. Afterward, there were more smiles
and handshakes as TCU CDs and T-shirts were handed out to the
appreciative Cuban students.
The highlight for many of the TCU students was the �nal 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 language
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 �nal jam that unleashed a torrent
of consecutive solos, each more impressive than the last. It was pure
musical spectacle that capped o� an impressive evening of jazz and a
successful, memorable trip to Cuba.