Arturo Sandoval will show off his mastery of the feisty instrument in Ventura

Written on February 8, 2011 – 11:11 pm | by Cameron Hussey

The trumpet, Arturo Sandoval says, is “tough.”

The mouthpiece, he likes to say, “never smiles to your face.”

He grins back anyway.

Sandoval can coax just about any sound from his frowning instrument — the highest of high notes, wild bebop riffs, spicy Cuban sones, classical concertos, heart-melting ballads.

Tough love has kept him playing .

The show is scheduled a few months before the main festival, which will feature nine concerts by musicians including the Mark O’Connor String Quartet and trumpeter Chris Botti from April 28 through May 7.

Pianist Rachel Flowers, a Hueneme High School junior and winner of the festival’s Student Jazz Competition, will join Sandoval and his band for part of the concert.

In February 2007, when Sandoval previously played in Ventura, audiences packed Ventura High School’s auditorium. This year, he’ll be at Anacapa Hall at Seaside Park at the Ventura County Fairgrounds, with room for two dance floors. While Sandoval works his chops, audience members are invited to exercise their feet, legs and other body parts.

Plus, couples who step lively and register by today can compete for $250 in the inaugural Latin Lovers Valentine Dance-Off before the concert at 7:30 p.m.

Dancers might be tempted to sway more slowly, too.

Sandoval’s most recent album, “A Time for Love,” released in May, is a swoon-worthy collection of classical standards and ballads, with the trumpet player backed by a string orchestra. It won a Latin Grammy Award for best instrumental album in November.

The Ventura concert is billed as a Latin jazz program, but when reminded that he’d be performing on Valentine’s Day weekend, Sandoval said he might slip in something from “A Time for Love.”

“It’s a very pretty record; I’m very proud of it,” said Sandoval. “The trumpet, for all its brash power, can be a romantic, intimate instrument.”

He had trouble finding a label willing to release “A Time for Love.”

“Because I was born in Cuba,” he explained, “I’ve been playing a lot of Latin jazz, with a lot of energy and powerful sound. It was going to be difficult for a record label to think about doing something different, something mellow and relaxing. It’s been 20 years since I came to live in the United States, and practically every year, with every record label who’s signed me, I’ve asked to make this style album. ‘Let me play softly,’ I said.”

Concord Jazz ultimately embraced the concept.

The album includes Great American Songbook standards like “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” along with classical works by Ravel, Fauré and Piazzolla.

He recorded the album in Los Angeles, where he now lives. Sandoval moved about a year and a half ago from Miami, where he taught at Florida International University and opened a jazz club (it’s now closed), to Hidden Hills near Calabasas.

Sandoval moved to Los Angeles, he said, because “there are a lot of opportunities to write music, to play music, to play great venues, and great musicians.”

Meeting a mentor

Born in Artemisa, Cuba, near Havana, in 1949, Sandoval started playing trumpet when he was 10 or 11, playing in a marching band and then studying classical music. He listened to jazz on the sly — Charlie Parker and his brethren weren’t government-approved entertainers.

He was a member of the influential Cuban jazz group Irakere, also featuring saxophonist Paquito D’Rivera and pianist Chucho Valdes (Sandoval left the group to form his own band in 1981).

In 1977, Sandoval encountered the man who would become his musical mentor, Dizzy Gillespie, when the famed trumpeter visited Cuba to soak up Afro-Cuban rhythms.

Sandoval, who had never spoken with Gillespie, met the musician when he arrived on a boat and offered to be his driver while he was in town.

“At that time I couldn’t speak any English, nothing, and I felt so restrained,” Sandoval said, according to “Dizzy,” a biography of Gillespie by Donald L. Maggin. Gillespie’s drummer, Ray Mantilla, however, spoke Spanish.

Sandoval told Mantilla, “I wanna tell this guy that I love his music and I’m here for whatever he wants. I never told them I was a musician; I was embarrassed to say that. Or to tell them that I served three months in prison for being caught listening to Willis Conover’s jazz program on Voice of America.”

They drove around in a ’51 Plymouth that was falling apart.

Later on that day, Sandoval pulled out his trumpet at a jam session, which led to a long relationship between the two trumpeters.

The Star spoke to Sandoval on Jan. 6, the anniversary of Gillespie’s death in 1993.

Sandoval said he wasn’t planning anything special to honor Gillespie on that day because “I remember him every day. He is my hero, my mentor, the one who brought me to this country. My next record will be a tribute to him.”

Sandoval was granted political asylum in 1990 after a harrowing defection in Europe while touring with Gillespie at age 40. He became a U.S. citizen in 1999.

His life sounds like a movie plot — and it was.

In 2000, HBO aired “For Love or Country: The Arthur Sandoval Story,” starring Andy Garcia. Sandoval received an Emmy Award for composing the film’s score.

During his years as a U.S. citizen, notable performances include collaborations with Justin Timberlake at the Grammy Awards; Alicia Keys at the Latin Billboard Awards; Celine Dion at the Oscars (they performed “I Finally Found Someone” from “The Mirror Has Two Faces”); and Tony Bennett and Patti LaBelle at the Super Bowl. On Jan. 29 he played with Monica Mancini at the opening of the Valley Performing Arts Center at CSU Northridge. Someday, he’d like to perform at Walt Disney Concert Hall.

‘Lifetime mission’

Sandoval also plays piano and fluegelhorn and is devoted to teaching, offering master classes and artist-in-residency programs to musicians of all ages. For anyone who wants to take up the trumpet, he said, “know that it’s really demanding. To be able to command the instrument, it’s a lifetime mission.”

Sandoval said he was initially drawn to the trumpet because “the way you can communicate is like the human voice, without the limitation. Expression-wise, you can say whatever you want to say.”

Sandoval proved his loyalty to the human voice by singing on two tunes from “A Time for Love.”

“I don’t have any pretension to have a good voice; I just whispered into the mike,” he said, adding with a laugh that “people didn’t critique it so bad.”

One of the sung tracks perhaps takes a loving stab at his feisty trumpet: Charlie Chaplin’s “Smile.”

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