It is a truth universally acknowledged among musicians that an unattached bass player in possession of considerable talent will not long be in want of a gig.<\/p>\n
Born and raised in Mexico City and trained at Berklee College of Music in Boston<\/a> on an academic scholarship, Sa\u00fal Sierra<\/a> moved out to the Bay Area in 1999 and within weeks he\u2019d connected with many of the top artists in Latin jazz, salsa, and Brazilian music.<\/p>\n For the next two decades the Palo Alto bassist became a steady collaborator with percussionist John Santos,<\/a> Dr. Loco\u2019s Rocking Jalape\u00f1o Band,<\/a> violinist Anthony Blea and his Charanga<\/a>, Cuban conguero Jesus Diaz and his QBA,<\/a> the song-centric Cascada de Flores, San Jose Jazz\u2019s SJZ Collective, and Venezuelan four-master Jackeline Rago\u2019s Snake Trio and Venezuelan Music Project, to name a handful.<\/p>\n But in the pressure cooker of the first years of the pandemic Sierra decided the time was ripe to showcase his own compositions and arrangements. With the support of a grant from InterMusic SF he released his first album under his own name, 2024\u2019s pan-American jazz suite \u201cCaminos.\u201d<\/p>\n He\u2019s already developed another album\u2019s worth of material, establishing his own musical identity by embracing the many Latin American idioms he loves.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve been playing this music for a long time,\u201d he said. \u201cSome 20 years ago I \u00a0learned about Venezuelan music from Jackeline Rago. I used to play more Peruvian music, which I miss. I learned about Uruguayan music from Edgardo Cambon. That\u2019s what I had in mind when I wrote \u2018Caminos,\u2019 drawing on music I\u2019ve been playing and styles I love.\u201d<\/p>\n He brings his quartet to the\u00a0SJZ Break Room on\u00a0Friday, Jan.30\u00a0as part of San Jose Jazz\u2019s winter concert series, featuring pianist and trumpeter\u00a0Marco Diaz and percussionist Julio P\u00e9rez, who have performed widely with Sierra as El Tren Tr\u00edo. They\u2019re joined by rising Nicaraguan-American percussionist Ahkeel Mestayer, \u201ca young lion of percussion who\u2019s studied with everyone,\u201d Sierra said.<\/p>\n \u201cHe knows the folkloric Cuban side and he\u2019s got a PhD in ethnomusicology from Cal. He\u2019s dedicated to the art, and grew up listening to all of us. Sometimes I think of him as a young John Santos.\u201d<\/p>\n Sierra presents a very different set of music at Oakland\u2019s\u00a0Sound Room on Saturday, Feb. 14\u00a0with Diaz,\u00a0P\u00e9rez,\u00a0drummer\/percussionist\u00a0Emilio Davalos, vocalist Laura Bravo, and\u00a0guitarist Jorge Liceaga and vocalist Arwen Lawrence (who perform and record as Cascada de Flores).<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s a different show, with music for Valentine\u2019s Day,\u201d Sierra said. \u201cWe\u2019ll be playing romantic songs with all kinds of rhythms, Afro-Peruvian lando, salsa, bolero, all the themes.\u201d<\/p>\n Sierra traces his expansive ear back to his upbringing in Mexico City. When he started working professionally in his late teens he often played five-hour gigs on the party circuit, \u201c45 minutes on, 15 minutes off, and you play every style you can imagine,\u201d he recalled. \u201cNot folkloric stuff, but all this different dance music.\u201d<\/p>\n Duly impressed by his rhythmic prowess, John Santos met Sierra in his first week in the Bay Area and quickly hired him as a sub in his Machete Ensemble. When he disbanded the 10-piece group in 2006 to create a more economically viable combo, Sierra took over the bass chair in Santos\u2019s quintet or sextet. He\u2019s held it down ever since, while also contributing many arrangements to the band\u2019s book.<\/p>\n Whether he\u2019s playing double bass, electric bass or baby bass, \u201chis playing is very percussive,\u201d Santos said, \u201cI see that largely as a result of traditional Mexican music and the\u00a0guitarr\u00f3n, the big bass guitar. His approach is super rhythmic, really striking the strings, almost playing conga. I don\u2019t see anybody else like that.\u201d<\/p>\n They\u2019ve also bonded over their love of danz\u00f3n, the elegant Cuban dance style dating back to the 19th\u00a0century. \u201cMexico is the only country outside of Cuba that adopted danz\u00f3n and made it their own,\u201d Santos said. \u201cThey feel it\u2019s theirs, and Sa\u00fal has written several beautiful danz\u00f3nes.\u201d<\/p>\n He\u2019ll be handling bass duties at the\u00a0Freight in Berkeley March 1\u00a0when the John Santos Sextet presents The African Roots of Jazz Latino with Congolese-American percussionist Kiazi Malonga,\u00a0Guinean percussionist Bongo Sidib\u00e9, African-American percussionist Baba Mosh\u00e9 Milon, and educator Lakiba Pittman making a rare appearance as a vocalist.<\/p>\n It\u2019s another case of Sierra spreading his creative wings, while preparing to make his next statement as a bandleader. \u201cThe title is Pan-American Point of View,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s not just Caribbean, Puerto Rico and Cuba. I like music from all over the Americas, and of course from Mexico.\u201d<\/p>\n Contact Andrew Gilbert at\u00a0jazzscribe@aol.com.<\/p>\n SA\u00daL SIERRA QUARTET<\/p>\n When & where: 8 p.m. Jan.30 at San Jose Jazz\u2019s Break Room, San Jose; $27; sanjosejazz.org<\/a>; 7:30 p.m. Feb. 14 at the Sound Room, Oakland; $35-$40; www.soundroom.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It is a truth universally acknowledged among musicians that an unattached bass player in possession of considerable talent…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":155802,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[967,143,145,144,420],"class_list":["post-156043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-entertainment","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-things-to-do"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156043\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/155802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}