Bobby Sanabria leading the Multiverse Big Band at Dizzy´s Club Coca-Cola.
Photo by Frank Stewart

Bobby Sanabria was born of Puerto Rican parents in the Bronx, New York, in 1957, the year West Side Story debuted on Broadway. He saw the film version years later, as a young man, with his parents and his sister, and in Leonard Bernstein’s musical setting of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet in mid-50s New York City, he heard something familiar yet also oddly new.

“At that time there wasn’t anything that acknowledged the contributions we had made, let alone the existence of NYC’s Puerto Rican community, other than articles about gangs and crime in relation to us,” wrote Sanabria, a drummer, composer, arranger, and educator in an essay about West Side Story published by the National Institute of Latino Policy. “Despite the racism my parents had experienced, and subsequently my sister and I were also subjected to, we somehow knew that our existence, our historical presence in the city had literally transformed it culturally, stylistically, and of course musically. The authors knew this as well.”

Of course, West Side Story is also a story about gangs in New York (“How could it not, it was an undeniable reality,” acknowledges Sanabria in the essay) but Sanabria saw more than that.
“It’s a complex story of romance set in the energy of the inner city amidst racism, bigotry, territorial imperative, and what causes it — fear and ignorance that’s offset by cultural pride, humor, and the spirit of fighting for what one believes in,” he writes.

Leading his 21-piece Multiverse Big Band and featuring the writing of nine arrangers, in West Side Story Reimagined (Jazzheads), Sanabria expands and updates nearly all of Bernstein’s charts. Mirroring the original, it is an ambitious musical piece that also bears witness of the times.

“This is a tribute to Bernstein, his 100th birthday and the 60th anniversary of West Side Story, but it’s also very much a socio-political statement,” said Sanabria in a recent interview from his home in New York. “It’s a different kind of statement because this is all instrumental, but people will get the message. The music is the message.”

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Crescent Moon Waning
Kip Hanrahan
(American Clave)

Neither a distinguished player nor a composer or arranger in a conventional sense, Kip Hanrahan occupies a one-of-a-kind place in American contemporary music. Beginning in the early ’80s, Hanrahan emerged as a bandleader/producer/conceptualist/music auteur. He became the off-center hub of extraordinary ensembles (don’t take my word for it, look them up) and also the ruthless instigator of unlikely musical blends and collisions — all captured in a remarkable 16-record catalog.

True to Hanrahan’s Bronx roots, his brand of cross-culturalism sounded lived-in; sophisticated, yes, but also rough-and-tumble. Call his music avant-jazz if you must, but in truth, it was an unruly, streetwise mix of jazz, blues, rock, pop, Afro-Cuban and Haitian roots music, New Orleans traditions and a half-dozen other influences, from bossa nova to Morton Feldman.

The results were never tidy, but that was never the intent. Instead, Hanrahan´s recordings seemed designed to present a contrarian view on questions of beauty, songwriting, ensemble playing and groove — and that was just for starters.

Anybody can go after perfection. But, ah, perfect imperfection — that’s a whole different matter.

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