Freddy “Fuego” Gonzalez photo courtesy of the artist
BY ALEXA PETERS
Freddy “Fuego” Gonzalez, trombonist, composer and this year’s commissioned artist for the Earshot Jazz Festival, is an explorer. More aptly, he’s dauntlessly thorough, the sort of musician who jumps at the chance to dig into music’s endless permutations.
“I really like the mathematical side of music, so I have no problem mathematically exhausting every possibility,” says Fuego.
In this spirit, Fuego kept a musical journal during the pandemic where he would collect ideas. No judgment, no scrutiny, just create a file, get out the melody, and then “forget about it.”
“That process allowed me to really dig [in] and explore, almost like the scientific method, you know, it’s just like, hey, here’s my hypothesis today,” he said.
It also gave him a rich bank of compositional starting points, many of which have served as seeds for the set of original music he’s presenting during the Earshot Jazz Festival this year. Fuego’s performance will feature the 20-piece Freddy Fuego Orchestra performing ten to twelve original and stylistically diverse compositions, chosen on-the-fly based on Fuego’s feel on the audience and ensemble.
“You got to read the moment, whether you’re trying to read the audience and see what they’re gravitating towards or if you’re trying to read the band, too,” says Fuego. “I treat it like a Choose Your Own Adventure book.”
Fuego lives for choosing and changing his adventures.
Originally from New York City, Fuego was born into an exceptionally musical Puerto Rican family and exposed to funk, salsa, jazz, and hip-hop from a very young age. Naturally, he began playing trombone early, and in 2006, while studying pre-law at Fordham University, he had a gig at The Blue Note that inspired him to think seriously about a career in music.
“That was a moment of, well, if I could do that out of love and passion and curiosity, what could I do if I actually had some training under my belt?” he said.
Fuego dropped out of Fordham and took off for Berklee College of Music in Boston. He was there for two years, then he came back home to finish his jazz degree at The New School. During his undergraduate years he shared the stage and recording studio with artists including B.B. King, Rubén Blades, Melissa Aldana, Delfeayo Marsalis, Bobby Sanabria, Arturo O’Farrill, and even Wu-Tang Clan.
Still, Fuego couldn’t ignore the itch to do more than perform other people’s music. Immediately following his graduation from The New School, Fuego went to Berklee’s Valencia campus where he earned a master’s degree in film scoring. About six years ago, following an internship with Stanwood, WA-based composer Ron Jones (who wrote music for Star Trek: The Next Generation and Family Guy) Fuego and his wife moved to Seattle, where he performs with musicians of all stripes. He is also the DJ for the Jazz Caliente radio show at KNKX.
“I’m a pretty promiscuous musician, you know; I’m not monogamous,” Fuego says with a laugh. “It’s like, hey, let’s do some salsa today, and then the next day let’s play some reggae, let’s play some rock, let’s do a wedding gig, let’s do orchestra. So, for me, I just play with everybody.”
Fuego’s diverse musical tastes shaped him into a musician who cares more about being authentic to himself than aligning with a specific musical style or path. The pandemic—and recent fatherhood—made him even more fearless in this way. Acutely attuned to his own mortality and the legacy he’s leaving behind, he realized, what do I have to lose?
“The jazz police knock on my door pretty frequently [saying] ‘that’s not jazz,’” said Fuego. “If you are improvising over the music and you’re putting something there that wasn’t because you’re feeling what’s in the moment and you’re telling a story, for me, I call that jazz.”
Fuego’s Earshot set at Langston Hughes will be made up of original “cinematic jazz” written between 2020 and now. His ensemble will perform a variety of compositions that draw on everything from the orchestral, acoustic, and movie-like to the improvised, amplified, and groove-oriented.
“We’ll have five strings, five winds, five brass, and five rhythms. It’ll be very autobiographical, just telling my story…but treating it like a DJ-type set. Imagine like a DJ…going from an orchestral tune, into a rock tune, maybe get cinematic for a bit, into some funk, salsa. Who knows?”
Who knows, indeed. But, with Fuego, that’s the fun.
