On the road to the Monterey Jazz Festival

By Tom Moore

Musicians who perform at the Monterey Jazz Festival don't simply appear fully realized out of the ether. Each has their point of origin, and those roots don't necessarily form in the music scenes of the world's large metropolitan areas. When Rafael Alcala began playing piano at eight years old, at his grandparents' house in Nuevo Laredo, he could not have foreseen that by the time he was 24, he would find himself on the same bill as jazz greats Herbie Hancock and Branford Marsalis.
A graduate of the VMT School of Communications and Fine Arts in Laredo, Alcala is studying jazz composition and arranging at Berklee College of Music in Boston, after spending four years in the Air Force. In between semesters, he performs around the world, and this summer he travels as far as Japan in a prelude to playing at the 46th annual Monterey Jazz Festival in Monterey, California in early autumn. He was in Laredo at the end of the spring semester to visit his alma mater and perform for the students at the magnet school.
Alcala grew up in a musical environment. "My grandfather Marcelino Hinojosa had a big band in Nuevo Laredo, and I used to go to his house all the time. That's when I started playing," he said.
"I didn't really start taking lessons till I came to the magnet school, with Dr. [Mary Grace] Carroll, when I was 15. That's when I started taking classical piano. And then a year later I met [magnet school music instructor] Rick Cortez, and he was the one who put me into the jazz mentality," said Alcala.
"I remember very clearly, when I started playing piano, and I heard [former magnet school music instructor] Jesse Quintero. He was playing a bolero. He was making some harmonies, some really intricate harmonies, very rich. And I asked him what that was. So we started getting into that, he gave me exercises. I was looking for sounds and rich music," said Alcala, who in the meantime played with a Tejano group called the Power Band.
"So I was trying to play Tejano and play that. Then when I met Rick my second year he started showing me more about jazz, and what to listen to, and that's where we started going more heavily," he said.
After graduation he joined the Air Force and was stationed in San Antonio, playing and touring with the Air Force Band for four years. During that time the Air Force Band recorded four albums on which he played.
He subsequently applied to and was accepted at Berklee on a music scholarship. He recently received the Billboard Award music scholarship for 2003, which covers not only tuition but room and board as well. "I've been very, very fortunate. I'm very excited about that," he said.
Alcala frequently plays with Mexican vibrophonist Victor Mendoza, who has taught at Berklee for 21 years. He has played with Mendoza's band since his first month in Boston. He has toured in Europe, Canada, and Mexico, and recently returned to Mexico for a week in early June to play at the Teatro de la Ciudad in Mexico City, as well as in Chiapas, Puebla, and Oaxaca. After a short stop back in Boston, he will travel to Japan for a tour with Cheryl Bentyne, one of the vocalists with jazz group Manhattan Transfer. In July, he will play as an accompanist at a percussion festival in Vermont for a week with musicians such as Horacio Hernandez, Tommy Campbell, and Oscar Stagnaro, bass player for Paquito D'Rivera. A second concert in Mexico follows, at the Teatro del Estado in Chiapas in late July. In August he travels to Europe -- Italy, Germany, and Spain -- to play with Mendoza.
Though it may seem like a jolt back to earth following such an eventful summer, Alcala will be in Boston when school begins for the fall semester. But he doesn't begrudge the prosaic world of academics. "I'm studying as much as I can, especially arranging, because I'm playing a lot, and I want to get into big band arranging," he said.
At the Monterey Jazz Festival in September, Alcala will perform his own original compositions with his own band, the Rafael Alcala Quartet. "I'm working on the music right now," he said. "I write depending on the context of the group. This group will have a trumpet player from New Orleans, Christian Scott, and he has that New Orleans sound. So I have to write for that. And there will be an acoustic bass, drums, and piano. Victor Mendoza will be guest artist. So it's going to be all originals that we'll be playing there. I'm very excited about it." He plays Friday, Sept. 19 at the Festival.
Monterey Jazz is not Alcala's first festival. He has performed at the Heineken Jazz Festival in Puerto Rico, Journes de la Percussion in Paris, the Universidad Veracruzana International Jazz Festival in Xalapa, Mexico, and the Perkusja Percussion Festival in Warsaw, Poland.
Alcala will attend the Monterey Jazz Festival as much a fan as a performer. "Herbie Hancock is going to be there," he said. "Chick Corea is going to be there. This Cuban singer named Issac Delgado. Branford Marsalis. Trumpeter Dave Douglas. All the heavyweights! It's scary. I learned a couple of weeks ago that we're going to be playing after the Michel Camilo Trio, with Horacio Hernandez and Anthony Jackson. That's even more scary: 'Oh, can we play before?' But we're playing after."
Despite the stellar line-up, Alcala's musical heroes and influences are less well-known and at times less jazz-oriented. "There aren't necessarily any specific names. It's all kinds of music. A big influence for me is my friend and teacher right now at Berklee, Danilo Perez. I've been studying with him for a year now. He's my main influence when it comes to piano. I've been very fortunate to take lessons with him. He's a world-class musician," he said.
"Right now I'm listening to a lot of [jazz pianist] Thelonious Monk," he continued. "I'm going back to the tunes that I learned when I was here. I just learned melodies, that's all I knew about. Now I'm trying to find out more, with harmony, more in-depth. I'm going back to re-learn these Monk compositions and have a different perspective on them."
Many musicians have favorite songs or compositions they like to listen to but don't necessarily like to play, or prefer for playing rather than listening. Alcala is no different. "As a matter of fact, just last month, before I finished school, I was listening to the St. Matthew Passion, a choral composition by Bach," he said. "I was trying to study that. Not necessarily to try and play it, but just listening to Bach's music, the fugues. That's the kind of music I don't play every day, even though I should. I don't sit down and to try to practice it; just listen to it."
Alcala is planning to release an album of his own music with the Rafael Alcala Quartet. "That is definitely happening," he said. They will record in July or August to have something to present at the Monterey Jazz Festival. Alcala's website at www.geocities.com/ mexirafa/rafaelalcala.html, continually updated with performance dates and information, will feature news of the album release on CD.
"I'm extremely proud to have a student like that, to have had the opportunity to teach somebody who was really serious about learning how to play and how to be a serious improviser," said Rick Cortez, Alcala's teacher at the magnet school. "Because it is an art form, it's not the easiest thing in the world to do, and it takes a lot of dedication. Rafa just had the will and the desire to do that. He's been a student of mine even after high school, all though the Air Force, but little by little, he's become kind of a colleague. It's rare that you have students like that who get to that level of playing. He's what I could consider a professional already. The things that he's accomplished, the places he's been and who he's played with, who he's going to be playing with soon -- it's just an indication of what kind of player he is. He's world-class."
So how does a guy from Laredo end up playing at the Monterey Jazz Festival? "It's a personal accomplishment," said Alcala. "But more than that, I'm going to be able to play my music for other listeners. To be able to share that, I think, is the most exciting part."