"Born and raised in Mexico City and trained at Berklee College of Music in Boston on an academic scholarship, Saul Sierra moved out to the Bay Area in 1999 and within weeks he'd connected with many of the top artists in Latin jazz, salsa, and Brazilian music. For the next two decades the Palo Alto bassist became a steady collaborator with percussionist John Santos, Dr. Loco's Rocking Jalapeno Band, violinist Anthony Blea and his Charanga, Cuban conguero Jesus Diaz and his QBA, the song-centric Cascada de Flores, San Jose Jazz's SJZ Collective, and Venezuelan four-master Jackeline Rago's Snake Trio and Venezuelan Music Project, to name a handful."
"But in the pressure cooker of the first years of the pandemic Sierra decided the time was ripe to showcase his own compositions and arrangements. With the support of a grant from InterMusic SF he released his first album under his own name, 2024's pan-American jazz suite Caminos. He's already developed another album's worth of material, establishing his own musical identity by embracing the many Latin American idioms he loves."
""I've been playing this music for a long time, he said. Some 20 years ago I learned about Venezuelan music from Jackeline Rago. I used to play more Peruvian music, which I miss. I learned about Uruguayan music from Edgardo Cambon. That's what I had in mind when I wrote Caminos,' drawing on music I've been playing and styles I love.""
Saul Sierra grew up in Mexico City and studied at Berklee College of Music on an academic scholarship. He moved to the Bay Area in 1999 and quickly connected with leading Latin jazz, salsa, and Brazilian musicians. He spent two decades collaborating with artists and ensembles including John Santos, Dr. Loco's Rocking Jalapeno Band, Anthony Blea's Charanga, Jesus Diaz's QBA, Cascada de Flores, SJZ Collective, and Jackeline Rago's projects. During the early pandemic he focused on his own compositions and released Caminos in 2024 with InterMusic SF support. He leads a quartet featuring Marco Diaz, Julio Perez, and Ahkeel Mestayer and performs at the SJZ Break Room.
Read at www.mercurynews.com
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