Erica von Kleist: Bringing Jazz Horns and Theory to Cuba

Saxophonist and flautist Erica von Kleist has just come back from a very special music and cultural exchange trip to Cuba, as part of the Horns to Havana program, bringing musical instruments and music to young students in need in Havana.

It’s been almost two weeks since she got back but she’s still excited to talk about her time there. “I knew it was going to be a life-changing experience,” she says. “Knowing the power of education and teaching students about jazz, it really outlined their true love of music and their desire to learn more about it.”

This was not the young saxophonist’s first time in Cuba. She had performed at theHavana International Jazz Festival in 2000 with a young Latin-jazz group called Insight, featuring the Curtis brothers [Luques and Zaccai] as well as Richie Barshay. She was just 19 years old at the time. “We grew up together in Hartford and we had a band when we were kids,” von Kleist explains. “One of the mentors for that band was Andy Gonzalez [Latin jazz bassist and producer]. Through Andy we got to know the big names in Latin jazz.”

One of those big names was Chucho Valdes, one of the founders of the festival and its longtime artistic director, who invited the group to appear at the 2000 festival in Havana. Needless to say, von Kleist quickly understood that the experience was a unique one for an aspiring jazz musician. “First of all being surrounded by so many amazing musicians like Nicholas Payton and Herbie Hancock—a who’s who of great jazz musicians—was quite exhilarating,” she recalls.

Although the group went down to perform at the festival, they also went to one of the arts schools, and so she also learned what Cuban musicians and Cuban people faced. “Getting to know the people there and seeing the surroundings, it was a whole other world from New York City and Connecticut. You have all your creature comforts up here, but down there, it’s a different story.”

The entire experience left an indelible impression on von Kleist, who went on to establish her presence on the NYC jazz scene, both as a leader and a member of groups such as Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society and DIVA. Her debut album Erica von Kleist & No Exceptions, released in 2010, featured several of those same musicians from her early days in Hartford, including Luques and Zaccai Curtis and Richie Barshay, as well as Wynton Marsalis’s pianist Dan Nimmer, vibist Chris Dingman and other emerging players.

Von Kleist initially became involved with the Horns to Havana program through her friendship and performances with Carlo Henriquez and Victor Goines from the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. The JALC Orchestra recently traveled to Cuba in 2010 and von Kleist says that the musicians in the orchestra were struck by the desperate needs of the young music students down there. “They said, ‘Wow, these kids need instruments.Their instruments are being held together with paper clips and tape.

They have no means to fix them, let alone get new ones.’” And two associates of the orchestra, Diane Ward and Susan Sillins, set up the organization called Horns to Havana and not only collected top-notch instruments, but also assembled a group of musicians who wanted to return to Cuba. They called on von Kleist because of her work with those musicians and her past experience in Cuba. - http://jazztimes.com/articles/28525-erica-von-kleist-bringing-jazz-horns-and-theory-to-cuba