Arturo Sandoval on Sangú, Freedom, and the Sound of Home

Arturo Sandoval has lived several musical lives: Cuban-born trumpet virtuoso, Afro-Cuban jazz pioneer, Dizzy Gillespie protégé, composer, bandleader, and one of the most decorated musicians of his generation. He is a multiple Grammy winner, a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award recipient, a Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient, and a Kennedy Center Honoree. And still, after all of that, he remains a restless student of sound.His new album, Sangú, is his 49th, a number that happens to match the year of his birth, 1949. It began during the pandemic with hundreds of iPhone recordings: fragments, grooves, chord changes, and ideas captured at home. His son Arturo “Tury” Sandoval III and his daughter-in-law and manager Melody Lisman helped shape those sketches into one of the most personal records of his career. Even the title came by accident. You’ll soon find out how a slip of language became a statement of purpose.The album is rooted in Afro-Cuban rhythm, but it is not nostalgic. It is Sandoval still moving forward, still practicing every day, still chasing freedom through discipline. In our conversation, he talks about forbidden jazz in Cuba, the Voice of America on the radio, Dizzy, Clint Eastwood, vinyl, yes even Rachmaninoff.This is a conversation about Sangú, but also about never stopping the creative process. About carrying Cuba inside you. About finding freedom in music, and then earning that freedom again every day. At 77, Arturo Sandoval does not sound like an artist looking back. He sounds like one who is still beginning.