(CNN Philippines) — Most new customers at Tago Jazz Café got there because they’d heard about it from someone they know.
Grammy Award-winning jazz pianist Edsel Gomez is different.
The New York City-based Puerto Rican got there because, last year, as he was getting ready for his second visit to the Philippines, he searched the Internet for a good jazz place in Metro Manila and Tago was one of the places that came up.
He chatted with cafe owner Nelson Gonzales through Facebook. And a few days later, in May, he flies in from Seoul, South Korea, where he had a gig, and one night, he walks into the little bar.
One thing led to another, and in just the week that he stayed here he made a lot of Filipino friends and even managed to squeeze in a few gigs, and even did some recordings with Filipino musicians.
That, by the way, was really his idea of how to have a wonderful vacation.
Few Filipinos — except maybe hardcore jazz enthusiasts — would know about Edsel Gomez, though he’s among the popular musicians in New York City. And he gets to tour the world as pianist and arranger for American jazz singer Dee Dee Bridgewater.
He’s also artist in residence at The Timber House in Park Hyatt Seoul in South Korea.
Edsel left Bayamón, where he was born, near San Juan, the capital of Puerto Rico, when he was 17 to study at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. That’s where he got his Bachelor of Music degree in 1985, with a Count Basie Award for outstanding musicianship.
His first album as a band leader was the Grammy-nominated Cubist Music, which was released in 2006 under Zoho Music.
Brazilian music figures a lot in his music. He lived for 10 years, from 1986 to 1996, in Brazil, where his two sons still live.
For more about Edsel, here’s the link to his website.
Anyway, in the brief chat we had at Tago, he told me that he would always research about the music of any country he planned to visit. And the Philippines proved to be of special interest to him because Puerto Rico, where he was born, was also a former Spanish colony.
There are the inevitable influences of Spain in music of the two countries, among other things.
Edsel lost no time in researching Filipino music.
A few days after arriving, he learned a few Filipino tunes and got together some musicians — Johnny Gaerlan on bass, Nelson Gonzales on drums.
The trio core got some support from percussion and native instruments played by Tusa Montes, Jazz Dufort, and Harold Santos.
The World Fusion Band, as Edsel called the group, played an afternoon gig on May 21, 2014, at the Ayala Museum.
For posterity, two regular customers at Tago — Papu Mendoza and Paolo Peña — volunteered to film the gig.
Among the Filipino songs they played were “Pandanggo sa Ilaw,” “Kakuli,” “Dandansoy,” and “Siasid.”
Edsel, however, started the gig with a traditional Latin tune called “Picadillo.”
Picadillo is a Puerto Rican dish, which is similar to Filipino giniling. It’s made from ground beef with tomatoes and potatoes.
To give you a better idea of what Edsel was about, here are some videos of the Ayala Museum gig.
‘ ’23’: ‘assetautoplay’: false ‘assetcontrols’: true ‘assetloop’: false ‘assetmuted’: false ‘assetpreload’: ‘auto’ ’embed’: ‘