Espinosa brings stylish blend to Cedar Rapids’ Jazz Night on 2nd

Bolero, bossa nova and Bacharach. An unlikely combination, but one that has served Gabriel Espinosa well as he blends his own style of jazz.

It’s taken him all the way from his hometown of Merida, Mexico, to a college teaching career in Pella and Grinnell, opening doors around the world for his students and his music.

All of his early cultural influences are at play on his fourth solo CD, “Bossas and Boleros,” being released Friday, June 23, 2023 — the same day he’s headlining the new Jazz Night on 2nd concert in the Pocket Park on Second Street SE in downtown Cedar Rapids.

Now 70, music has played a pivotal role throughout his life, informing the sounds he would write and play on his own and in several bands, including the popular Ashanti, which has jazzed up various Corridor stages.

He began playing guitar at age 6, and around age 10 or 11, he and his mother began visiting his uncle at his bar in Merida during the daytime, when it was closed.

“They would play Nat King Cole. I said, ‘Wow, that is nice. I like that stuff.’ Then I used to go to his house, and he would have records of Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Nat King Cole, and I would listen to that stuff,” Espinosa said.

“So he was the one that introduced me first to jazz, and that stayed in my head — ‘I don't know what it is. But I like it.’ ”

And that led to the question: “Why would somebody from Merida in the ’60s get attached to jazz?”

“Well, because I had an uncle that liked that,” the soft-spoken Espinosa said by phone from his home in Pella.

That’s why audiences are likely to hear his spicy cover of The Carpenters’ hit, “Sing,” tucked amid Latin-flavored tunes Friday night and on the “Bossas and Boleros” CD. His 50-minute Cedar Rapids set will be split between music off the new CD and from his earlier works.

His own kind of music

“Sometimes they tell me, ‘Are you a jazz musician? You are playing The Carpenters.’ Well, I play music that I like, and The Carpenters play beautiful songs, and Bacharach wrote beautiful songs, and Jobim wrote beautiful songs. They just broke the standards and are still good today,” he said.

“I like good music and I gravitate towards that.”

However, he shies away from being labeled in a specific category.

“I don't like when they put one title, because I’m not really a jazz musician. I’m not really Latin, because I don’t play salsa. I play a very mellow Brazilian jazz, I call it. Brazilian, with just with a tinge of bolero inside.

“I write stuff that I want people to sing along — something catchy, something that you can remember when you leave the place. The same way that Jobim wrote ‘Ipanema’ or Sergio Mendes wrote ‘Mas Que Nada,’ he said, singing a very familiar restrain.

“I like to do stuff that people can remember. Sometimes jazz musicians are very obscure. I respect that — that’s what they do. It’s just not what I do,” he said.

“I like to do stuff that people can chew, you know? And then we get a good rapport between the audience and the band. We have a good thing going on, because we’re giving you something that you can digest. That’s my point. I don’t want to try to impress anybody with my ability to play.”

Educational path

By age 14, he was playing bass guitar with his brothers Victor and Patricio in their band, Los Deltons. About a decade later, he made his way from Mexico to Iowa through connections not through music, but through tennis. He became friends on the courts with professor Jim Graham from Central’s study abroad program, which ran in Merida from 1968 to Dec. 31, 2020.

When Espinosa decided he wanted to study music, Graham encouraged him to come to Pella on a language assistant scholarship. He arrived in 1976, and graduated with his bachelor’s degree in 1979.

“After I went to Central, that’s when I discovered that I really wanted to spend my life with music, but I did’t want to spend my life with classical music,” he said. “I wanted to spend my life with jazz music.”

And he was off to Boston, where he earned a degree in arranging from Berklee College of Music, and formed Ashanti with classmate George Robert. They performed around Boston, and from 1984 to 1991, took their band to Cancun, Mexico. A newlywed at the time, after seven years of playing in hotels six nights a week, Espinosa felt like he needed to do something else.

As luck would have it, he helped put together the Central College Wind Ensemble tour to Mexico in 1991, and asked director Paula Holcomb what it would take to get a job at Central. She said he would need a master’s degree, so he talked it over with his wife, Gabriela.

“She was blessed enough to say yes,” he said, and in 1992, Espinosa enrolled in the University of North Texas in Denton, where he sang with the school’s Jazz Singers, began producing albums for Mexican artists, and in 1995, received his master’s degree in jazz studies.

Then he contacted Holcomb and Ray Martin from the Central College music staff, and they created a job for him.

Espinosa and his wife “took a leap of faith.” He quit his job working short-term with a composer in Mexico, and with their three young daughters, they moved to Pella for the “30-year experience.” And on July 3, 2018, he, his wife and daughter Natalia became U.S. citizens.

“We took the right route, made a great choice, and came to Central,” he said. “The Central College experience opened the doors of my life.”

Not only did he fall in love with teaching, but Central’s Jazz Mania festival gave him the opportunity to meet international jazz musicians, bringing in one guest every year.

“I became acquainted with many of those people that I rapport with today,” he said.

He served as director of jazz studies at Central, directed the jazz band, taught private lessons and began the Vocal Combos program there. In 2004, he also became director of the Latin American Ensemble at Grinnell College. And he performed with his band on weekends — all because he had “the best wife ever.”

Now he’s ready to chart a new career course, having retired from Central in May with the title of professor emeritus of music. He plans to continue his work at Grinnell College, and instead of leading Ashanti, he’ll focus on a solo career, collaborating and recording with some of the musicians he met through Jazz Mania.

He has no intention of really slowing down.

“I have never stopped playing music,” he said. “I cannot stop.

“There’s enough resources and the people and the support to be able to manage those completely different lives, but at the same time they come together. I’m very happy.”

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