Grammy winners bring salsa and mambo to Atlanta

On Monday, Oct. 5, 2010, in a San Francisco Bay Area club, Latin big band Pacific Mambo Orchestra played its first gig. There were more players on stage than concertgoers in attendance.

Just under four years later, on a stage in Los Angeles, the band accepted a Grammy Award for best tropical Latin album, in recognition of its self-titled, self- and crowd-funded debut release.

“We were all flying high, obviously. A dream come true,” relates trumpet player and Pacific Mambo Orchestra co-founder Steffen Kuehn, noting collective shock at beating out the likes of Marc Anthony and Carlos Vives for the award. Trombone player Jamie Dubberly, who grew up in Brunswick and graduated from the University of Georgia, notes that “a smaller version of the band went on a national tour and I think that helped increase the exposure of the band across the country.” Ultimately, he describes the group’s feeling as “very fortunate, very humbled to be part of it.”

Kuehn, Dubberly and bandmates are bringing their big sound to the Rialto Center for the Arts on Feb. 19.

The band typically has 20 performers on stage, with a usual combination of piano, bass, timbales, congas, bongos, four trumpets, four trombones, five saxophones and two lead vocalists. Their style is drawn from the big bands of the Tito Puente era, combining mambo, salsa, bolero and Latin jazz with a dizzying array of other genres.

On most recent (2020) album “The III Style” (its name a reference both to a common clave or rhythmic pattern framework and the fact that it’s the group’s third release), classical music gets the notable mambo treatment to thrilling effect. One example is an arrangement of Aaron Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man,” which begins fairly similarly to the original arrangement before shifting gears to take in driving percussion, Spanish language vocals and a bright, staccato trumpet solo.

Even more daring is “Mambo Rachmaninoff,” an eight-minute, big band arrangement of the composer’s famed “Piano Concerto No. 2″ by Pacific Mambo pianist and co-founder Christian Tumalan. It’s a favorite of Kuehn’s, particularly live.

Credit: Courtesy of Pacific Mambo Orchestra

Credit: Courtesy of Pacific Mambo Orchestra

“I don’t think there’s any limit to what you can put a clave to — it’s very adaptable to basically anything,” says Dubberly. Ultimately, the group’s independence is truly liberating. “We can really call our own shots and decide what we want to do and what feels good to us,” Kuehn emphasizes. “We’re all creative and adventurous spirits, and we like to explore.”

A little closer to traditional territory for a group like this is an arrangement of Dizzy Gillespie’s jazz standard “A Night in Tunisia,” which sounds like euphoria in musical form. The combined trumpet, trombone and saxophone parts keep it bouncing along, and then guest soloist (and former Gillespie pupil) Jon Faddis showcases his range by hitting stratospheric notes. “That was the first tune we recorded” for the album, notes Kuehn. “It came out phenomenal — the bar was extremely high.” The song’s explosive live video highlights the group energy Atlantans can expect at Saturday’s performance.

“The III Side” follows 2017 live album “Live From Stern Grove Festival,” a set that included a guest appearance from percussionist extraordinaire Sheila E. Band members felt they needed a live record to demonstrate they could bring the goods on stage as well as in the studio. All of that was on the heels of the stunning success of the debut album, one put together in Tumalan’s tiny San Francisco studio. “He just broke down walls so we could record the big band in there,” laughs Kuehn. Bay Area musicians chipped in and helped out, and a Kickstarter campaign ensured the record’s release — and path to a Grammy victory.

The band’s firm place in what Dubberly calls “a rich tradition and scene of Latin music, Afro-Cuban music in the San Francisco Bay Area” developed over time as group members met one another in various combos. And if the diverse musical backgrounds Kuehn and Dubberly both bring to the group are common among their peers, it should come as no surprise Pacific Mambo Orchestra has welded their Latin style to everything from classical to Japanese folk.

Dubberly started off in concert and marching bands in Brunswick before focusing on classical music at the University of Georgia. In graduate school at the University of Hartford’s Hart School of Music, he “started playing more jazz and got more interested in that” while continuing to study classical. A six-year stop in New York for Broadway traveling tours also brought the Georgian into the world of Latin music, “working as a salsa trombone player before I knew it.” By the mid-2000s, he had switched coasts and immersed himself in the scene. “You could literally work six nights a week playing salsa — so many venues, so many bands,” he relates.

Kuehn’s journey to California started even further away, in Freiburg, on the edge of the Black Forest in Germany. As with Dubberly, classical music came first. “There was no jazz [played] in Germany,” he admits. “I was just listening to it.” After playing bass guitar in hard rock and R&B bands, Kuehn developed a taste for improvisation and wanted to apply that to his trumpet playing. A love for Herbie Hancock, Pat Metheny and Yellowjackets eventually led him stateside to enrollment in the renowned — and world’s first — jazz program at the University of North Texas. Following stints on cruise ships, in Mexico and in Munich, he wound up in San Francisco. He and Tumalan had similar ideas for a Latin big band, which turned into Pacific Mambo Orchestra by that fateful Monday night.

Both Dubberly and Kuehn have multiple projects on the go, in parallel with Pacific Mambo activity. Kuehn works frequently as an agency first-call pick-up player, sharing the stage recently with a Los Angeles ska band, Motown legends the Four Tops and Temptations and Latin artist Luis Enrique. He arranges and records in a home studio. Dubberly also leads the eight-piece Latin Jazz group Orquestra Dharma, which includes Tumalan and has had particular success in New York’s salsa scene.

While Pacific Mambo Orchestra continues to support “The III Side,” group members are in the initial stages of planning their fourth record. One idea: “Maybe go back to Tito Puente and make a true mambo record. Probably no guest artists,” suggests Kuehn, adding that was just an early possibility.

In the meantime, the group is excited about performing in Atlanta. “It’s very special for me to get to come back and play in Georgia and be able to bring our Pacific Mambo sound to audiences in Atlanta,” enthuses Dubberly. “Man, I’m looking forward to it!”