Bill Caballero brings Latin jazz to RB library
Music fans will get a special treat on Wednesday, May 11 when Bill Caballero performs a Latin jazz concert.
The concert will finish off the Rancho Bernardo Friends of the Library’s jazz concert series.
The concert will be from 6:15 to 7:30 p.m. in the community room at the Rancho Bernardo library, 17110 Bernardo Center Drive. This concert is free and open to the public.
Caballero, a leading San Diego band conductor and trumpet player, will perform Latin jazz covers and classics, some of his own arrangement.
Latin jazz is a unique style of jazz all its own. “Latin jazz is not just bebop music with a conga drum added,” said Caballero. “It’s not salsa.”
Caballero said the music he performs has Afro-Latin-centric origins, including Cuba and Puerto Rico, and includes styles like mambo, rumba, bolero, cha-cha, bossa nova and samba.
While some of the main players in his quintet are not available for this concert, Caballero wasn’t worried about using substitutes. “My substitutes are better than most first stringers,” he said.
Caballero said he grew up exposed to Latin jazz, though he wasn’t aware of it. His father listened to a lot of Latin jazz artists, and several of his uncles were musicians, though he never heard tem play.
He started playing the trumpet in sixth grade, when he joined the band. “I wanted to play the trombone, but my father wanted me to play the trumpet,” said Caballero.
While his father wanted him to play the trumpet, he didn’t want to buy him an expensive instrument, so Caballero spent an entire summer sitting in band class, the only student without an instrument. “In those days, schools didn’t lend out instruments, unless you played something like the bass drum,” he said.
Instead, he spent his time learning to read the music and absorbing everything around him. When his father finally bought him a trumpet, Caballero said learning to play wasn’t difficult. “I wouldn’t say I was a natural, but it came easily to me,” he said.
He started playing professionally when he was 14, performing in an R&B group in clubs. “My eyes were really big, staring down at the debauchery I was seeing (in the clubs).”
In college, he was passing by a Latin jazz music class and was so taken with the sound, he joined in on his trumpet. “I was really struck (by the music). I heard it and I knew, that’s what I want to do,” he said.
When he’s not performing, Caballero keeps busy teaching trumpet lessons to students of all levels and ages.