A Flourish of Trumpets for Sandoval

These are high-flying times for Arturo Sandoval. Ever since he defected from Cuba last July, good luck has rained on the virtuoso trumpeter.

A protege of Dizzy Gillespie and arguably the most astonishing soloist to emerge in the past decade, he has a prominent role on the David Grusin sound track of the movie “Havana.” Last month a worldwide audience saw him as a member of the United Nation ensemble (locking horns with Jon Faddis) playing “Night in Tunisia” on the Kennedy Center Honors TV show. He has formed his own seven-piece group in Miami; his first album for GRP Records, “Flight to Freedom,” with Chick Corea as guest soloist, will be released shortly.

“I wanted to settle in America a long time ago,” he said the other day, calling from his apartment in Hialeah, Fla. “There was one big problem, man. I didn’t want to leave without my wife and my son, who’s now 15. So early last year, when the Cuban government had me set for a long tour of Europe, I asked them to trust me and let me take them along for a couple of months.

“They said they’d think about it; then they told me it was OK to go. Well, the very day after I left, I walked into the U.S. Embassy in Rome and asked for political asylum.”

Within weeks, he was in New York as the central figure in a celebration at the Village Gate, where he was welcomed by Bill Cosby, singer Celia Cruz (who left Cuba 30 years ago), and others whom he had met back in the 1970s. He added his skyrocketing sounds to the bands of Mario Bauza (an early innovator in the Afro-Cuban tradition) and Tito Puente. His blend of salsa and bebop overwhelmed the crowd.

Born just outside Havana in 1949, Sandoval studied classical trumpet. Like Wynton Marsalis, he has earned credits in two musical worlds, playing with symphonies in London and Leningrad, teaching at the Cuban Ministry of Culture’s Music School, but also helping to develop the Afro-Cuban jazz fusion in which Gillespie had played a pioneering role.

The two men met when a 1977 jazz cruise brought Gillespie, Stan Getz, Earl Hines and other U.S. jazz men to Havana. Sandoval was then a member of the explosive jazz-cum-rock-cum-Cuban band Irakere, which gave a recital for the visiting Americans.

“Dizzy came back to Havana several times, and I was in America, first with Irakere and later with my own band,” says Sandoval, “so we kept in touch. In 1982 we both happened to be in Helsinki, so we made an album together. Later, he asked me to join his United Nation band--15 musicians from seven countries. I played with him all over Europe--everywhere except America, where I couldn’t get a visa.”

For his previous visits he had gained entry through the power of either CBS Records (who recorded Irakere) or the office of the mayor of Chicago (he played at two of that city’s annual jazz festivals), but the red tape involved in securing a visa just couldn’t be unknotted this time. Sandoval, already frustrated by life in Cuba, decided the moment had come to work himself free.

“Conditions are just terrible there for a musician. You work for the government, and they pay you a ridiculous salary every month; for that you have to do everything--records, TV, concerts. Even when I traveled abroad they would give me a very small sum to eat on, nothing else. And it’s impossible in Cuba to buy musical instruments or anything else.

“While I was in the army they caught me listening to Willis Conover’s Voice of America jazz show, accused me of being pro-American, and threw me in jail for 3 1/2 months. It’s not the Cuban people who are at fault--they love jazz--it’s just the government.”

Before settling here, Sandoval was reunited with Paquito D’Rivera, the saxophonist who worked with him in Irakere (and recently with the United Nation band). D’Rivera defected a decade before Sandoval; last year they made an album together in Germany.

“Right now, though, I have my own band, the one you’ll hear on the album. They all live in Miami, but the guitarist was born in Cuba and the sax player is from Venezuela.”

Dizzy Gillespie, with whom Sandoval has maintained frequent contact, feels that his protege will be able to spread out his musical canvas in this country. “So much of the music he loves was created here,” he says. “It’s great that he’s in the States now and able to do whatever he wants.”

As his recordings have revealed, Arturo Sandoval is a maverick. Though he has mastered the idiom in which Gillespie was the chief protagonist, at times he incorporates stratospheric notes that recall the late Cat Anderson of Ellington fame. His style is a mixture of salsa-oriented grace and powerful crowd-appealing technical prowess, along with the traditional verities of bebop.

He still has mixed feelings about leaving his homeland. “That was a difficult decision, but I had to do it.

“Go back there? No way, never, man. They’d put me in jail for sure. My main worry now is that my parents, my sister and other people in my family are still there. I have an uncle here in Florida who’s trying to invite my mother and sister over, but as of now they won’t let them out. I’d like them to have the same advantages I have now. I just want them to feel free like me.”