Multitasking is an art form for Ivan Trujillo whether he is in San Diego, his hometown of Ensenada, performing at England’s famed Glastonbury festival or some point in between.
A tireless trumpeter, composer and music educator, Trujillo leads multiple bands and performs around the world with the Tijuana-based electronic music group Nortec Collective.
He is a member of the Ensenada Chamber Orchestra and appears regularly with the genre-blurring San Diego band B-Side Players. He is also the founder of both the Ensenada-based Instituto Contemporáneo de Música de Baja California, which offers classes in jazz performance, improvisation and history to teens and young adults, and of International Improvisation Week, an annual festival he launched in 2014.
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“I do all my teaching in Ensenada, but having musical relationships in San Diego is also part of my work,” said the 43-year-old polymath. “So, my heart is in Ensenada, but I’m trying to go everywhere!”
Trujillo recently became the head of CEART Ensenada, a government-funded cultural center. In April, he became the first Mexican to ever receive a Jazz Hero Award from the New York-based Jazz Journalists Association in the 23 years the awards have been presented. In October, he will perform multiple times as a featured artist in the first annual San Diego Tijuana International Jazz Festival, a three-day event for which Trujillo is also serving as a key artistic advisor.
“Ivan is exceptionally well-qualified because he has established so much of a presence on both sides of the border,” said festival founder Daniel Atkinson, who has curated the La Jolla Athenaeum’s jazz concert programming since its inception in 1989. Atkinson has showcased Trujillo at several San Diego concerts — including two editions of the Festival of New Trumpet Music West — since booking him to perform in 2018 with Nortec Collective at UC San Diego.
“One of the more recent performances I saw Ivan do was last year at Centro Cultural Tijuana,” Atkinson said. “It was at a concert sponsored by the U.S. consulate in Tijuana to commemorate 200 years of diplomatic relationships between Mexico and the U.S. Ivan put together a binational band specially for the event and he once again bridged the border with his broad perspective, expertise and level of experience.”
Trujillo is used to figuratively bridging borders — and to literally crossing them.
When he was 21, the then-budding trumpeter would regularly undertake a six-hour round-trip from his home in Ensenada to SDSU, where he studied with trombonist Bill Yeager and played with the university’s award-winning big band.
“My first class was at 11:30 a.m.,” Trujillo recalled. “So, I’d go two hours by bus to Tijuana, walk across the border and take the trolley from San Ysidro.”
Thanks to a carpooling friend, his commute was a bit less arduous for private two-hour trumpet lessons with top San Diego trumpeter Gilbert Castellanos, who Trujillo had met as a teenager at a jazz festival in Ensenada.
“Seeing Gilbert play live, in real time, was a big inspiration,” Trujillo said. “I’d never heard a trumpeter play jazz in person before. He was amazing! And Gilbert was born in Guadalajara and spoke Spanish. He taught me that, if you are going to play the trumpet, you must study seriously every day. One day he taught me a trumpet exercise he had learned from Dizzy Gillespie. I was like: ‘Wow. Dizzy taught this to Gilbert and now Gilbert is teaching this to me!’ It was magical.”
“Ivan was really hungry to learn,” Castellanos recalled. “He told me: ‘I’ll pay you whatever you like.’ And I said: ‘If you’re making that much effort to get up here from Ensenada to study with me, you don’t have to pay.’ Ivan even came up to L.A. a few times when I was teaching at USC’s Thornton School of Music. He would sit in my classroom and absorb everything.”
Trujillo learned his lessons well. And he quickly realized that rather than copy Castellanos, Miles Davis, Chet Baker or any of the other trumpeters whose music he greatly admired, it was imperative to create his own style and sound.
“I was 19 when I started to compose my own music and that is when I started to find my voice,” Trujillo said.
“I lived in Los Angeles for a year when I played in Johnny Polanco’s salsa band. And I saw so many musical opportunities there and in San Diego that we did not have where I grew up. So, I moved back to Ensenada and started a weekly Monday night jam session. Then, I started what is now my La Covacha Big Band and began bringing down guest musicians, including Nathan Hubbard, from San Diego.”
Like Castellanos, Trujillo devotes much time to mentoring young musicians, teaching them and sharing with them the outlet for creative expression and joy jazz provides. The free Oct. 5 and 6 San Diego Tijuana International Jazz Festival concerts in Tijuana and San Diego, respectively, will feature the debut of the Bi-National Youth Ensemble. It teams musicians from Trujillo’s Contemporáneo de Música de Baja California with musicians from Castellanos’ Young Lions Jazz Conservatory, which is based at Liberty Station.
“Ivan and I have the same mission: to share and deliver this musical message with the next generation,” Castellanos said. “He puts his heart and soul into everything he does.”
“I don’t know if I’ll ever be an amazing or famous trumpet player,” said Trujillo, now at work on a new album. “But playing and teaching makes me happy and complete. Music is the main thing for me, always.”
First annual San Diego Tijuana International Jazz Festival
With: Cindy Blackman Santana band, Magos Herrera with the Hausmann Quartet, Gerald Clayton, Bi-National Youth Ensemble, Nortec Jazz Experience, featuring Bostich + Fussible and the Ivan Trujjilo Ensamble
When: Oct. 4-6
Where: 6:30 p.m. Oct. 4 at California Center for the Arts, Escondido; 6 p.m. Oct. 5 at Avenida Revolucion, between Calle Salvador Diaz Miron (4th) and Calle Emiliano Zapata (5th), Tijuana; 5 p.m. Oct. 6 at Quartyard, 1301 Market St., San Diego
Tickets: The Oct. 5 and 6 performances are free. Tickets for the Oct. 4 opening night range from $42-$118.
Online: sdtjjazz.org
