On Friday, Sept. 19, the Wellesley College Concert Series kicked off the fall semester with “RICANO,” an Afro-Caribbean jazz experience led by award-winning saxophonist and composer Jonathan Suazo. “RICANO” is Suazo’s debut album, released in 2023, for which the artist gathered a group of diverse musical backgrounds. The project is an experimental blend of Puerto Rican and Dominican musical traditions, with underlying influence from other genres such as smooth jazz. 

The energy was high in Jewett Auditorium on Friday night. As Suazo and his bandmates took the stage, a soft green light fell over the room and bathed the audience in its glow. After a brief silence, the group jumped right into the performance — a hypnotic union of sounds that ranged from playful to melancholy, tranquil to invigorating. 

Suazo led the band on the sax, with Nadia Washington on vocals, Ian Ashby on bass, Ely Perlman on guitar, Guilhelm Fourty on drums, Harold Charon on piano and David Rosado performing on the Conga, a Puerto Rican drum, as the group’s percussionist. Throughout the show, Suazo and Washington danced to the music of their peers, losing themselves in the harmony they had all created together. Suazo is a deeply empathetic leader, holding eye contact with his bandmates, nodding to them encouragingly as they dived into the most difficult segments of the music, and smiling brightly when they seamlessly carried each and every note. His joy is contagious; soon enough the musicians were exchanging grins between themselves, speaking in a language of their own. This was a band in sync.

About halfway through the performance, I glanced around at my fellow attendees and was delighted to notice the contentment emanating from all sides. Students, faculty and visitors alike were bobbing their heads along to the music, their smiles as cheerful as Suazo’s. Several people had closed their eyes and allowed themselves to be transported from this cool September evening to another world. Suazo, too, paused his playing now and then to enjoy his bandmates’ work and experience the music in its entirety. At one point, he also asked the audience to participate by calling out a few lines from one of the songs. The responses were rather quiet, perhaps due to shyness, but the audience was clearly enraptured by this powerful concert. 

After the show came to a close, attendees trickled out of the auditorium and gathered outside the doors. When Suazo came out, a crowd of admiring students flocked around him immediately, eager to ask him questions, talk about the music and, of course, get his autograph. 

I was fortunate enough to speak with Forty, the drummer collaborating with Suazo for this show, for a few minutes after the performance. Fourty originally met Suazo while at Berklee College of Music, their shared alma mater. He was drawn to the project’s blend of Puerto Rican and Dominican musical traditions, both of which he had long been curious about but unable to study professionally. 

“When I discovered this fusion of music, I was like, Whoa, what is that?” Fourty said. “For me, it’s very inspired, because I’m from France and we don’t learn anything like that. So it’s kind of me going in his direction and learning about his culture, his rhythms, his music.” 

Fourty emphasized that his role was to accent the percussion and let Rosado lead on the conga, a traditional Puerto Rican drum. “I’m sort of highlighting on the drums,” he explained. “The rhythm was not written for the drum set, it’s meant to be played by percussion. So every time we play together, it’s very tricky to find the perfect balance between him playing the actual rhythm and me floating around and adding a jazz flavor.” 

I mentioned a moment where it seemed as if Fourty and Rosado were responding to one another through their instruments, like they were improvising a conversation. Improvisation, Fourty said, is a crucial part of jazz language. “[You listen] to what the improviser is telling and then you respond to that. You compliment it,” he explained. “It’s all about telling a story together.”

Later, after the crowd had dissipated and Suazo had signed his last autograph, I interviewed the musician as he packed up for the night. He explained the origins of “RICANO,” how the project really goes all the way back to his childhood. It was Suazo’s father, also a saxophonist, who introduced him to the world of jazz, and specifically smooth jazz, raising him on a steady diet of Sonny Rollins and Stan Getz. 

Suazo attended Berklee’s Global Jazz Institute, where Washington currently teaches, and where he conceived of “RICANO,” his final project for the program. “I started digging into my roots, [thinking that] maybe there’s something there for me based on three basic questions: Who are you? Where do you come from? And why music?” 

Suazo’s reflections on each of these questions led him to connect with his two of his cultural roots — he is both Puerto Rican and Dominican — and also to reconnect with his late father, who passed away in 2011. Suazo found an abundance of inspiration while exploring Puerto Rican and Dominican folk music, and felt inspired to fuse these new discoveries with his work in jazz. 

“It ended up being a magical journey that resulted in a beautiful debut album last year,” he said. “And now we’re in the process of getting the music for “RICANO: Volume Two”… It’s going to come out next year, hopefully.”

Suazo expects that “RICANO: Volume Two” will be more experimental than its predecessor, pushing the traditions it’s drawing on in a more innovative direction. “I’m taking larger leaps [to] … showcase what it can be, and the different things that live within myself … trying to find a home.” At its core, “RICANO” expresses Suazo’s journey to rediscover his cultural roots through music, pushing boundaries by creating a multifaceted sound unique to his own vision. 

The Wellesley community’s ecstatic reception of “RICANO” spells out a great start to the semester for the Wellesley College Concert Series. Suazo’s performance will be followed by “Wings to Fly,” a Music Faculty concert on Oct. 19. If the response to “RICANO” last Friday is any indication, “Wings to Fly” will be a performance you would not want to miss.

Contact the editors responsible for this story: Norah Catlin, Anabelle Meyers