Jazz Professor Felipe Salles Featured in DownBeat Magazine Discussing 'Home is Here'
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Felipe Salles, professor of Jazz and African-American Music Studies, was recently profiled in DownBeat Magazine discussing the conception and execution of "Home Is Here," the final piece in his immigration-themed trilogy.
In "Home is Here," Salles focuses on the theme of immigration in the jazz community. It follows "The Lullaby Project," released in 2018, and the Guggenheim funded multi-media "The New Immigrant Experience," released in 2020.
An excerpt of the article can be found below:
Like most composers of programmatic music, Felipe Salles based his first big band album — the well-received 2018 release The Lullaby Project And Other Works For Large Jazz Ensemble (Tapestry) — on personal experience. But in conceiving and executing its widely praised 2020 followup, The New Immigrant Experience, and this year’s Home Is Here, Salles drew inspiration from the testimonies of others.
To be specific, on New Immigrant Experience, the 50-year-old São Paulo-born saxophonist-composer scored nine works for his 19-piece Interconnections Ensemble around five-minute video testimonies culled from long interviews with DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) recipients about their lives and aspirations. For Home Is Here, which features the same band, he spoke with eight distinguished improvisers, each a U.S.-based immigrant (Paquito D’Rivera, Melissa Aldana, Jacques Schwarz-Bart, Yosvany Terry, Nadje Noordhuis, Chico Pinheiro, Sofia Rei and Magos Herrera), creating bespoke pieces from the conversations.
“I talked to Felipe about my path to moving to the U.S. and my difficulties adjusting to the culture — even the musical culture — but also my love for travel and adventure,” said trumpeter Noordhuis (from Sydney, Australia) of the chat that gestated “Wanderlust,” her feature on Home Is Here. “I love rock and metal, and he incorporated a bunch of those influences. When I heard it, I thought, ‘This is awesome.’”