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Costa Rica Meets Jazz, Juilliard Style By AARON DIEHL
Exposure to vibrant cultures, great hospitality, soulful people, and delicious home cooking contribute to the recipe for a great jazz musician. Another part of the recipe is give-and-take: learning how to cooperate with each other, personally and musically, so that everyone's idea of how to play comes together to form a nucleus of swing. Costa Rica, where the Juilliard Jazz Quintet spent a week at the end of May, was perfect for finding these ingredients. On this trip, the ensemble consisted of Carmen Intorre on drums, Yasushi Nakamura on bass, Jumaane Smith on cornet, Jon Irabagon on tenor saxophone, and me on piano. There remained an eclecticism of musical individuality while a group bonding precipitated concrete goals of fellowship, democracy, and that great feeling of swinging together and having a wonderful time. That, after all, is what jazz is about.
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| Juilliard jazz musicians performed at the Carlos Maria Ulloa senior citizen’s residence in Costa Rica. (Photo by Julio Sequeira) |
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The experience was not only limited to performing. An educational component accounted for many of the activities, but, unlike previous trips to places such as St. Louis, the group was obliged to conduct master classes without the leadership of artistic director Victor Goines, who had other obligations in New York City. "It's challenging, because you have to gauge what level the students are at," says Irabagon, who led the master classes. "You also have to learn how to deal with students individually, but at the same time assist the whole group."At the Bach School of Music, a local music academy in San José, a group of students played Dizzy Gillespie's "A Night in Tunisia," seeking advice on various ways to approach the composition. The University of Costa Rica's School of Music invited the Juilliard Jazz Quintet for an informal performance, during which some of the music students sat in on a couple of tunes. Though most of the audience knew very little about jazz, they displayed keen interest in learning, asking questions ranging from "Who are some of the great jazz artists?" to "Why is Jumaane playing a cornet and not a trumpet?" Jumaane, always creative with demonstrations, even strutted to the thump of Yasushi's bass during an assembly with students from the Anglo American School, explaining the metaphor of "walking a bass line."All the events throughout the week were hosted by the Centro Cultural Costarricense Norteamericano, an institution that incorporates education in the English language with cultural exchange and dialogue. Much of that dialogue occurred during sessions where students from the Cultural Center and Juilliard would congregate to share information about each other's culture. Performances by the quintet usually preceded the discussions, and for some of the Costa Rican students, it was their first exposure to jazz. "When the jazz quintet came, it was my first experience relating to this type of music," says Katherine Mora, a student at the Centro Cultural. "It's also nice to speak English with Americans so I can understand the language better."Manuel Arce is responsible for programming the various artists who perform at the center's intimate Eugene O'Neill Theater. "Our objectives are to bring young, talented people to Costa Rica so that they may share their knowledge with the students," says Mr. Arce. "We had great expectations about Juilliard's visit, and those expectations truly became a reality." Mr. Arce provided many opportunities for exposure to the Costa Rican press, including television and radio interviews, as well as dinner with Alberto Zuñiga, jazz critic from La Nación, the main newspaper in Costa Rica. He also served as an informative tour guide for the band, revealing some of the fine Costa Rican delicacies, as well as the vibrant nightlife. A couple of hours were even spent hiking the trails of the rain forest and admiring the beauty of the La Paz waterfalls.All of the master classes, sightseeing, and cultural interchange were inspiration for putting on great performances. The concert at the Eugene O'Neill Theater featured standards as well as some original compositions, including Yasushi's Language of Flowers, Jon's Stop and Go, and Jumaane's Apostrophes Please. The theater was packed with people, who fueled much of the energy on the bandstand through thunderous applause. Since this performance was toward the end of the week, each member of the quintet was well acclimated to the sound of the band. We also had the honor of playing at a party for the American ambassador to Costa Rica, John Danilovich, who is transferring to Brazil. Other performance venues included the Carlos Maria Ulloa senior citizens' residence and the El Tirol Hotel.
One of the most popular commodities to take home from Costa Rica was the coffee, which rivals any cup o' joe in the United States. But from the performances, master classes, and cross-cultural sessions, the Juilliard Jazz Quintet brought home a profound quality abundant in the people of Costa Rica—that of a great appreciation for art, culture, and humanity. For any artist, there is no recipe greater than that. Pianist Aaron Diehl is a bachelor's degree candidate in jazz.
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