Etienne Charles’ Commissioned Work To Reopen Lincoln Center’s David Geffen Hall

An interview for Carib News, Inc.

Trinidadian trumpter Etienne Charles is currently commissioned by Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts to present his latest piece San Juan Hill: A New York Story which kicks off the reopening of the David Geffen Hall on October 8. The performance will be a muilti-media work that will seek to transport the audience via music, visuals, and original first-person accounts of the history of the San Juan Hill neighborhood and the indigenous and immigrant communities that populated the land in and around where Lincoln Center resides.

Carib News had a sit down with Charles ahead of this anticipated presentation. Here’s a snippet of the interview below.

CN: Tell me about your Trini roots and the influence of the culture on your success as a musician

EC: I’m very lucky to be from a musical family in Trinidad. Both of my mother’s grandfathers were musicians. My father played in a steel-band - Phase II Pan Groove, my uncle and my brother, they all played in Phase Two. My father’s father was also a musician. He is actu-ally documented recorded with The Growling Tiger, Neville Marcano. And he was a part of a national band that was assembled to come. Independence in Toronto, he’s a great cuatro player. He also played guitar and sang. His name was Ralph Charles and my mother’s grandfathers were artisans named Zephrin Mendez from Paramin and my mother’s other grandfather, his name was Clayman Louis was a great musician as well. He played many instruments. So that was my introduction. It is genetic.

CN: And how did you come to specifically choose Jazz as the genre?

EC: You know, I wouldn’t say I chose, I would say when I was getting ready to go to study mu-sic at the time, you could either study classical or European classical musical or. Music or at the schools that I was going to, you could study jazz studies there, you know, there wasn’t like a serious music business thing or anything. And so for me, I was more inclined to the improvisatory styles that were jazz because I always saw a link between that and what we do in Trinidad & Tobago.

For me, I’m always drawn to the concept of expression conversation and that in group set-tings and you get that very much in this music that people now know as Jazz.

CN: You’ve performed with some greats. Who is by far the artist you are most proud to have worked with?

EC: Well, you gonna get me in trouble here.I think Roberta Flack stands out at, at the top. Not only because of her body of work and her impact globally as a singer, pianist and composer songwriter, but also because of how it happened, right. It happened in Trinidad and, and I was sitting in with her band. I came up on stage to take a solo during a song called Back Together. She played at Zen nightclub, and I remember they brought a piano for her to play on. And after this, she turned around, she didn’t even know I was gonna be there. And after the show she said, yeah man, it was very nice to play with you. We’re playing in Connec-ticut next weekend. I’ll see you there.

And I was like, I just get a gig just so? So I end-ed up in Connecticut for the weekend show. You know, there’s no written music, there’s no sheet music. Right. And then after that show, she said we’re playing in Clearwater next week-end. I’ll see you there.

I was just like, yo, what kinda thing is this? Seeing how her music impacted not only the musicians on stage, but the audience. And still to this day, I remember certain moments on stage where everybody’s singing, and yeah, she’s such a brilliant artist and her story is very in-spiring. So, I think she just kind of okay. Stands out, but there’s so many, you know, nobody gotta get mad at the Black icon.

CN: You’re currently on commission with Lincoln Center to present your work A New York Story and with the New York Philhar-monic, what does this mean for you as this little boy from T&T?

Understanding that San Juan Hill is a connec-tion that shows the impacts of colonialism and imperialism and not just colonialism, but settler colonialism, and being a simple fellow from Glencoe, Trinidad, and sitting here in these hallowed halls of this great institution, but also understanding that this institution sits on the ground that was once inhabited by brilliant Caribbean immigrants and their chil-dren - brilliant people long before Harlem, long before Brooklyn and those areas being known as Caribbean enclaves, and San Juan Hill going all the way down that was Black New York. So for me, it’s always about trying to channel that. My music is also about bringing the road to the stage. Artistically, I’m making this dialogue happen. Between what I do here and what I do worldwide with my music. And then when I come back home to be on the road. So it’s more of bringing home with me everywhere I go, and then also bringing what I learn outside back into home.

CN: San Juan Hill has a rich history that many people including myself did not know about. Tell me a little bit about what the idea was behind this latest project and why it’s important to tell this story.

EC: So the idea came about when I first. Started school here at Juilliard for my masters and the first concert was the music of Herbie Nichols. And I remember seeing Nichols, N I C H O L S. But as a trainee name, I know some Nichols from Trinidad and I didn’t pay attention, play the concert. And the coach for the concert, this gentleman by name of Frank Kimbro, great pianist and scholar of Herbie Nichols’s music. He, you know, he picked up on my accent and he said, you know, what, where are you from? I said, I’m from Trinidad. And he said, well, you know, Herbie’s family was from Trinidad. And he was born right there. Literally he pointed right there. And I was like, he said, yeah, he was from San Juan Hill. And that was my first introduction to anything Caribbean in New York being outside of Brooklyn. Right. Or Long Island. And then I was in a rehearsal with Monte Alexander and he started talking about Thelonius Monk and how his music had almost like a Caribbean Calypso bop. And I was like, yeah, you know, I never thought about it. And he said, Monk was from San Juan Hill and that was a Caribbean working class neighborhood. Or there was a significant amount of work from class Caribbean people there. So then I, okay. There’s this name again? So that’s where the idea came from and how, and then yeah, for people, I want them to just get an insight into what was, and to think about who was and what they did and how and why.

CN: So your work has always explored the marginalization of communities and using the music to put a spotlight on them. When did this sort of first do you consider ACTIS activism? And if you do, when did this sort of activism become part of your work?

EC: It’s a great question. The first time that I constructed a piece, I was 100% dedicated to the concept of marginalized people, but also as an effect of colonialism and the migrations that happened as a result was this piece called the San Jose Suite. And it was a focus on the effects of colonialism based on three Spanish colonies from the perspectives of the Afro descendants and the indigenous peoples of each place. I started writing that piece in 2015 and traveled to each place, sat down with people, got stories, learned the history. And it was interesting be-cause there was a certain energy that happened in the music and where these people had been. And that was when I realized that something needs to continue... I think service and loyalty and keeping the goal of searching for new ways to engage people and to remind them of what they may not have known about that is in their past.