This episode of The Other Side of the Bell, featuring trumpeter, vocalist, composer and percussionist Pete Rodriguez, is brought to you by Bob Reeves Brass.
This episode also appears as a video episode on our YouTube channel, you can find it here:
"Pete Rodriguez trumpet interview"
About Pete Rodriguez:
Trumpeter, vocalist, and percussionist Pete Rodríguez carries the bloodline of Nuyorican salsa as he takes his unique brand of jazz to exciting new places.
Son of salsa singer Pete "El Conde" Rodriguez and godson of Fania Records bandleader Johnny Pacheco, Rodríguez cut his teeth playing with some of the greatest names in Latin music.
By age 19, he was musical director of his father's band. As a vocalist, he sang on Tito Puente's Grammy-award winning Mambo Birdland. As an instrumentalist, he's appeared with legends including Celia Cruz, Chico O'Farrill, Bebo Valdez and Eddie Palmieri, including performing on the Brian Lynch/Eddie Palmieri Project's Grammy-winning release, Simpatico.
As a bandleader, Rodriguez draws on his diverse upbringing—including living through the birth of Hip Hop in the Bronx and becoming an accomplished classical trumpeter during his adolescence in Puerto Rico—to create his own brand of jazz that defies categorization.
The result is music that has been praised as "not only instrumentally ferocious, but texturally rich and at times profoundly intimate," with compositions "rich in musical depth, tone and beauty, as well as rhythm and melody… giving his music an appeal beyond genres." (Downbeat).
His music demonstrates his aptitude for hard-driving, modern post-bop jazz, as much as melodic Latin variants and R&B-tinged grooves.
Rodriguez has released a series of acclaimed albums as a leader, including Mind Trip, The Alchemist, Caminando con Papi (Destiny Records), El Conde Negro (Destiny Records), Obstacles (Sunnyside Records), and his most recent, I'm Pete Rodríguez, Vol. 1 (Sunnyside Records), named one of the Best of 2024 by the New York City Jazz Record.
His forthcoming I'm Pete Rodríguez, Vol. 2 continues his exploration of identity, resilience, and innovation.
"As a bandleader he's working on a clean, complex and flexible model of modern Latin jazz … his compositions change shape and character, according to the free flow of the arrangements, among art song and swing and clave. Draped over all of it is Mr. Rodriguez's powerful playing, soft-toned but battling." – The New York Times
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