San Juan Jazz Hero
Bassist, educator, composer, recording artist and producer Ramón Vázquez Martirena was born in 1970 in the Cuban province of Matanzas, relocating to Puerto Rico with his family as a child. He became absorbed in music during middle school, taking up the bass as a challenge, pursuing mastery to attain high honors, scholarships, degrees and a broadly based, rewarding performance career with Latin American popular music artists, national symphonies and jazz stars.
Vázquez was musical/artistic director for the Dominican Republic Jazz Festival from 2010 to 2015 and vice president, curriculum developer and founder of FEDUJAZZ, a foundation where the focus is music education in rural communities. He’s also been an advisor, lecturer and/or professor at the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico, Universidad Interamericana of Puerto Rico, The Dream Project and Berklee College of Music, among other institutions, as an advisor, lecturer and/or professor. He gets virtuoso gigs, like being soloist for Alfonso Fuente’s “Tropical Concerto for Electric Bass and Orchestra, performed with the Sichuan Philharmonic Orchestra in 2015, and has theorized for academia about “the artist as a motivating entity in musical education.”
But the JJA’s celebration of Ramón Vázquez as a Jazz Hero is due to what he’s done way beyond his strictly musical career. Working for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) during the ongoing recovery of Puerto Rico from devastation wrought by 2017’s Hurricane Maria, Ramon Vázquez connected dozens of musicians in need to the Jazz Foundation of America. He became the key connector and guide in music relief work throughout the island, among other activities coordinating bands in the JFA’s Jazz in the Schools program to help create gigs – including one at his childhood school in Cidra. He also produced the Festival de Jazz en la Montana to keep live music going through the pandemic. He is a Jazz Hero to the JJA, to the Jazz Foundation and many people on the Caribbean island that remains the U.S.’s unincorporated territory, just a wonderful guy.
By Joe Petrucelli, executive director of the Jazz Foundation of America
