All swings considered
Daniel Freiberg brings a Latin accent to the Siletz Bay Music Festival
By Eliot Sekuler
For the TODAY
Maestro Yaacov “Yaki” Bergman, artistic director of the Siletz Bay Music Festival, spoke enthusiastically of one of the additions to this year’s festival’s roster of artists:
“Daniel Freiberg is remarkably versatile,” he said. “He’s a tremendous pianist and composer who has collaborated with some of the biggest names in the world of Latin jazz. And he writes terrific music based on Latin jazz for symphonic orchestra. It’s a whole new direction for the festival.”
Freiberg’s many talents will be in full display at two of this year’s festival concerts: the “Welcome to the Club” jazz night on Thursday, Aug. 31, when he’ll lead an improvisational quintet, and the “Sounds of the Americas” gala finale on Sunday, Sept. 3, which will include his ambitious symphonic suite, “Northern Journey.”
“Welcome to the Club” will be held at the Lincoln City Cultural Center. “Sounds of the Americas” will take place at the Chinook Winds Resort.
Reached at his home in New York, the multiple Grammy-winning Freiberg was modest when describing his current musical projects.
“I do a little bit of everything,” said the Argentina-born musician, while taking a break from composing a new string concerto commissioned by a German orchestra. In addition to his relatively new vocation as a composer of symphonic music, “everything” in Freiberg’s world includes work as an in-demand producer, composer, arranger, pianist and recording/mixing engineer.
The symphonic piece, “Northern Journey” is something of a musical autobiography for Freiberg, who began his career in Buenos Aires. He began taking classical piano lessons at age eight until, five years into his studies, he received Dave Brubeck’s classic, “Time Out” as a birthday present. The album’s irresistibly cool and sophisticated music hooked Freiberg immediately, causing a dramatic shift in his musical focus and setting him off on a career in contemporary pop and jazz.
It was a difficult time for the people of Argentina. A brutal military regime ruled the country and an atmosphere of repression weighed upon daily life. At age 21, Freiberg left Argentina for New York, arriving with $300 to his name and a mission to immerse himself. Upon arriving, he found himself in the midst of an intense snow storm.
“Right away, I had to spend $125 on a coat,” he said. “I was really broke.”
He took odd jobs, looking for opportunities to gig where he could find them, saving when he could for lessons in arrangement, composition and piano. Among his teachers were jazz piano great Jaki Byard, famed arranger and orchestrator Don Sobetsky and piano teacher Joan Behrens Bergman, later to be the wife of Yaki Bergman.
The training in orchestration, composition and arrangement were to pay off in the years that followed.
In 1985, a friend introduced him to the legendary Cuban-American saxophonist-clarinetist Paquito D’Rivera, with whom he began a long-term working relationship and friendship that has continued to this day.
Freiberg played piano with Rivera’s band for five years, performing in clubs and festivals throughout the world. He has also composed music for several of Rivera’s albums and won a Grammy award in 2013 for mixing Rivera’s classic album “Song for Maura,” to which he also contributed as a composer. Gradually shifting to work as a producer, arranger and recording engineer, Freiberg worked with such major Latin artists as Marc Anthony, Jose Feliciano, Willie Colón and José José, while never ceasing his work as a composer and pianist.
For Freiberg, the term “Latin jazz” describes a broad area of contemporary music that encompasses many musical traditions.
“It’s a very wide and imprecise label,” he said. “It used to be that people defined Latin jazz as music from the Caribbean, the music of Tito Puente, Mongo Santamaria and Poncho Sanchez, music like salsa and mambo. But it’s not that way anymore. Latin jazz encompasses music that has colors from any Latin American country, not just Cuba and Puerto Rico.”
Freiberg noted that many Latin jazz musicians, including Paquito D’Rivera, have helped bring the musical traditions of Peru, Brazil, Uruguay and his native Argentina into the big tent of Latin jazz, a musical form that, like mainstream jazz, is characterized by its emphasis on improvisation.
“There’s a good deal of jazz solo improvisation when we play, whereas in salsa, although there might be some improvisation, it’s not the main focus of the music,” Freiberg said.
One of his many collaborations with D’Rivera resulted in a dramatic change in his career trajectory. More than 35 years ago, Freiberg had composed a piece for Paquito to perform with a symphony orchestra. Many years later, a tape recording of that concert was heard by the director of Germany’s WDR Cologne Radio Orchestra, who commissioned Frieberg to compose another orchestral piece, a concerto for clarinet.
That concerto, “Latin American Chronicles: Concerto for Clarinet and Symphony Orchestra” drew upon Freiberg’s musical background. Lively, accessible and expressively rich, it was well received by audiences and critics. In 2017, the same orchestra commissioned “Northern Journey” and Freiberg has been busy composing orchestral pieces ever since.
“It totally changed my career,” he said.
Freiberg’s full plate of projects as a composer, arranger, producer and concert performer doesn’t allow for the kind of club dates upon which he cut his teeth in years gone by, but he said he’s looking forward to the club-like ambiance of the festival’s “Welcome to the Club’ jazz night. He’s recruited some top players from the Portland area for his set: drummer Jason Palmer, guitarist John Stowell, bassist Kevin Dietz and sax/clarinetist John Nastos.
“We’ll play some of my compositions and other music with Latin American rhythms,” he said. “And for the second half of the show, Jessie Marquez will be singing with her husband, Clay Gilberson on piano. It’s going to be a lot of fun.”
For a complete schedule and tickets for the Siletz Bay Music Festival, go to www.siletzbaymusic.org