The Sant Andreu Jazz Band at 20 (pt. 2)
In Part 1 of this series celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Sant Andreu Jazz Band, we looked back on its creation and the first five years of its life. Here we’ll pick up where we left off, in 2011…
Throughout 2011 and into 2012, filmmaker Ramon Tort and audio technician David Casamitjana became a presence at SAJB rehearsals and performances, as they filmed footage for what would become the award-winning documentary A Film About Kids and Music.
“Although I already had the idea of making a documentary about the band,” Tort says, “it was Joan who, after an interview with the journalist Borja Duñó, asked me to get in touch with him, to conceptualize the idea. And so it was, with Borja we conceived the project and later he helped me in the script of the film.”
As for the actual filming, the kids took the presence of the camera crew in stride. Tort found that it wasn’t necessary to remind the subjects to ignore the scrutiny of the cameras with which their time at rehearsals was being recorded (Alba Armengou recalls that she, her mom, and sister Elsa shot the scenes in their home of the girls disassembling and meticulously cleaning their trumpets. We later see Alba Esteban giving her own sax a thorough cleaning with the same tender loving care). “We spent a year and a half filming,” Tort says, “and they ended up normalizing our presence very quickly. For them, the presence of the cameras was totally normal.”
Magali remembers, “I don’t know how long Ramon was filming us — maybe a year. A lot of times! In the first weeks and months, it was like, ‘there’s a camera there, and there’s a camera there…but at the end, it was normal. You get used to it. We humans get used to everything!”
Was there anything that surprised Tort personally about the kids during filming?
“I was surprised by the group in general and at the same time, each one of its members seduced my gaze for different reasons. The way Joan treats children is and was, for me, an example to follow and in fact it has helped me personally, to draw conclusions about education, and parenthood. Treating children as people, without hierarchical roles, as equals, is also essential for me.”
The completed film allows us to enter the SAJB world on a rather intimate level, with a flow of scenes that allows us to sit in on rehearsals, eavesdrop on conversations, catch glimpses of private music lessons, and feel the excitement and joy of public concerts — all under Chamorro’s firm but benevolent guidance.
In those early days, Andrea admits, attitudes about being a part of the band were sometimes more casual. “Maybe some people didn’t want to do certain things, some others didn’t want to compromise so much with other things, some people were just having fun or killing time…we weren’t so sure what this was. We were of course having fun and performing, but it was not an easy time all the time. Sometimes it’s not all as beautiful as it may seem. I was there ten years, and there were so many things happening and going on. Nowadays, everyone who gets in has a profile. Before, there were talented musicians who were also kind of trouble sometimes.”
There are a number of individual moments in the film to relish (with the dialogue best appreciated in the DVD version that includes English subtitles): Eva Fernandez teaching Alba Armengou a few dance moves as the band rehearses; teacher Montse Jorba asking Eva, Magali, and Andrea Motis to interpret the intent of the lyrics to “Please Don’t Talk About Me”; Chamorro and Andrea taking a nighttime stroll through Sant Andreu, discussing Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, and whose life would make a more interesting biography; Chamorro telling friend and fellow bandleader Ricard Gili how young Alba Esteban had gone to great pains to learn a tune in a more difficult key than necessary; Jesse Davis offering Chamorro a heartfelt thank-you for his work with the SAJB; Magali singing, in a private lesson, a spare but breathtaking rendition of “Georgia on my Mind”…
There are plenty of other memorable scenes as well — and that’s not even including footage of the SAJB concerts themselves.
Magali’s unique and easily identifiable voice and phrasing began to bring much attention to her as a singer:
The film reaches its emotional apex with the SAJB’s concert in November of 2011 at the Palau de la Música Catalana in Barcelona, accompanied by American musicians Wycliffe Gordon, Jesse Davis, and Terrell Stafford, all of whom offer their impressions of the project in between memorable collaborations onstage with the young SAJB musicians.
Trumpeter and educator Terell Stafford was moved by seeing such young musicians entering the jazz world. “To walk in yesterday and to see a six-year-old holding a trumpet that’s almost taller than her, almost brought tears to my eyes. It was probably the most joy I’ve ever experienced as a musician. To see that the music I’ve loved so much, and I’ve tried to express the love and passion that I’ve had for the music — to see it in people that are so young — and not only do they have the joy of playing music, but there’s a passion, and there’s a desire, and there’s feeling, and there’s emotion. And you can tell that every student has taken an ample amount of time to listen to the music, and it comes through them. It comes through their pores. And it affected all of us yesterday. I mean, we were all in shock.”
Chamorro recalls, “the whole concert was very exciting, with the collaborations of Wycliffe Gordon, Jesse Davis and Terell Stafford. And all of this, the film A Film About Kids and Music…It was a dream come true. [It is} a very important document that shows the beginning of something that continues to grow and yield results. Results that go beyond myself and those who are part of the Sant Andreu Jazz Band.”
Arnau Julia says, “I believe my last official concert was at the Palau de la Música with Terell Stafford, although I continued playing for another year or two to help with the transition to a new drummer.” That drummer would be Abril Sauri.
At the film’s November, 2012 world premiere at the In-Edit festival in Barcelona, Kids and Music won the Jury Prize. “The festival not only allowed us to understand that the film was capable of explaining Joan’s project well,” Tort says, “it also opened the door for us to be able to release it in commercial cinemas in February of the following year. A true dream, that we would never have imagined.”
The film also won Best Feature at the 2013 Lights. Camera. Help! Film Festival. Throughout 2013 and 2014, Tort traveled to 37 film festivals across Europe and North America, where Kids and Music won 14 awards in all.
While the film initially gained attention and praise from movie theatre audiences, Tort agrees that YouTube and other online outlets have been essential to the SAJB’s growth in popularity around the world. “The growth of the SAJB goes hand in hand with the evolution of social networks,” he says. “It is perhaps one of the positive things that platforms like YouTube have, that allow something that fifteen or twenty years ago would have been impossible.”
As Tort filmed the SAJB in action, another special collaboration that helped the project reach greater musical heights began to take shape in 2011, between Chamorro and musician/arranger Joan Monné.
“Joan and I knew each other since we were young,” Monné says, “and started at the same school, Taller de Musics. I studied piano there, he was playing in the big band, and I played with them sometimes, too. We played together several times, in small combos and in the big band.”
Chamorro asked Monné to take part in a concert by the Miles Davis Tribute Band — comprised of SAJB members and several top Barcelona musicians — paying tribute to Davis on the 20th anniversary of his death. They played a single concert on August 31, 2011, at Barcelona’s Apolo Theatre, with arrangements by Alfons Carrascosa and Sergi Vergés.
The resulting album, Sketches of Catalonia, was named as a reference to the Davis-Gil Evans 1960 album Sketches of Spain.
Chamorro then asked Monné to write some arrangements for the SAJB. The first song he arranged was “Sing Me a Swing Song” sung by 10-year-old Alba Armengou (beside some very distracting professional lindy hoppers) at the Palau de la Musica for the Barcelona Jazz Festival.
Since then, Monné has written over nearly 300 arrangements for the SAJB big band, small combos, and vocalists.
He explains the process that takes place each time Chamorro decides on a song he would like the band to learn: “Normally, he gives me some instructions, with records from Ella Fitzgerald or Count Basie or several big bands, and he’d tell me ‘I want an adaptation of this arrangement for my band’ and then he’d have precise instructions about it. Sometimes it’s more open, and he’d say, ‘I want an arrangement for ‘Body and Soul’ and do whatever you want’, for example. Normally, there are clear instructions for what he wants.”
From there, Monné has a number of creative decisions to make, such as how close to stay to the original version of a song, and how much to add of his own creation.
“He told me that there were young musicians and some of them were not so experienced, especially the trumpet players. Because arranging for a big band, the range of the trumpets could be high. He told me some of the musicians don’t have that high range, so don’t go too high for the trumpets. But for the rest of the band, he told me they could play almost like professional musicians.”
Monné was, like so many others, impressed with the skill level of the kids. “For sure it was a surprise — not a big surprise because I knew about his work with the band and the age of the kids, but it was a surprise to see that they could play almost like a professional big band, and I could write almost everything I could imagine.”
The band’s momentum, both creatively and publicity-wise, continued to increase at a steady rate during this time, as Chamorro began to contemplate new possibilities for his young and ever-improving musicians.
From his students’ perspective, it was natural that sharing their rather unique musical interest among themselves would lead to the formation of close friendships.
Andrea says, “And of course Eva and I have a really close relationship — we were the teenagers, and when you’re a teenager your friends become so important. We had other friends at the school, but in the SAJB friendships became very special for all of us, because it was something we were committed to do together, and you’re sharing one of your passions or same hobbies together. And that makes it more special because in school you just have to go there, but with music it’s somewhat more emotional. We had more in common than with some of our school friends.
“I think the most beautiful thing was that we went through many special moments with the SAJB together,” she recalls. “Rita came some years later, after there had been the three of us, Eva, Magali and I. When I started with the band, Eva was already there. After two years, Magali came, and some years after, Rita appeared. So Eva and I were the oldest two, and Magali and Rita a little younger.”
Andrea’s love and respect for her original SAJB friends hasn’t wavered. “We went through so many things with teenager friendships, Eva had a boyfriend in the band, I had a boyfriend at some point in the band…Magali and Rita also had enormous talent. I have always been a fan of Magali because her interpreting is very authentic, and she’s a very authentic person, I love her so much, too. I think of them like sisters, because you can imagine we knew each other when we were very little, we would sleep at each other’s house, have parties…I met Magali when she was only eleven, I think. That’s the feeling when we play together, someone you’ve known from childhood, someone you’ve spent afternoons with…”
When Arnau Julia looks back at those years, “I remember finding a group of young people who loved playing music and spending time together,” he says. “I remember many rehearsals — often very long ones — but also the food breaks, celebrations, small concerts, and the fun of those first trips.”
He also singles out a concert in Plaça Catalunya in Barcelona. “It was in September 2011 during the La Mercè city festival. I’m not sure why I have such clear memories of that concert — perhaps because it took place in such an important public space, as part of a major city festival, and because a great orchestra (the Barcelona Jazz Orquestra) played after us. Now I’m doing some gigs with BJO!”
“Then in 2020, I returned for two years to support the band again, as the drummers were still young and needed help with some performances. I was very happy to play with them and to meet the new generations.”
A photo gallery from 2012:
Elia Bastida joined the band that summer. She began violin lessons when she was five years old and has referred to the instrument as her “first love.” She later enrolled at the Escola Municipal de Musica de Sant Andreu, where her studies were centered strictly on classical music — she was barely aware of jazz at all.
Always on the lookout for promising talent to enhance the SAJB, Chamorro once suggested to her, “It would be nice if we can do something with the violin” in the jazz band. Elia hadn’t considered any possibilities of playing violin in jazz, but says she thought that perhaps it might happen at some point much further down the line.
Andrea later approached Elia with Chamorro’s renewed offer for the violinist to work out some songs. He sent her Joe Venuti’s “Pretty Trix,” which she worked out, played, and sent back to him to assess. Shortly thereafter, she was a member of the SAJB, diving into the deep end of jazz, as Chamorro and others introduced her to the music of Stephane Grappelli and a host of other jazz giants. She hasn’t looked back on classical music since.
“I entered the Sant Andreu Jazz Band when I was 17 and it really changed my life,” she says. “It was then when I got into jazz and it was clear that I wanted to dedicate myself to this music, I wanted jazz to be my language.”
In addition to learning how her famous predecessors adapted the violin for jazz, she also enhanced her crash course in the genre by studying and transcribing solos played on other instruments. “In the beginning, I transcribed the other instruments more, solos by musicians like Chet Baker, Lester Young, Clifford Brown, Freddie Hubbard.” Within another two years, she would pick up a saxophone and have it become her second instrument.
As for the youngsters…A sweet moment from that year featured Alba Armengou, upon being assigned to sing “A-Tisket, A-Tasket” with the band, promptly asked her friend Alba Esteban, “Do you want to sing this with me?”
“I said yes,” Alba E. recalls. “I was nervous at first, but I was doing it with friends.”
Meanwhile, as the two Albas slowly but surely learned the ropes onstage and in rehearsals, Chamorro was eager to include more vocal numbers for the band featuring his older singers, Andrea, Eva, and Magali — both individually and as a group.
“I enjoyed learning those songs and singing them,” Magali says. “It was amazing to sing with friends, with more than one voice, to harmonize. I love it.”
At the time, Edu Ferrer was the lone — and an only occasional — male singer in the SAJB (that would change in the coming years), but Chamorro knew he had a talented and appealing lineup of female vocalists who, together, would do justice to the songs made famous by the legendary American women jazz singers. He had begun producing his series of Joan Chamorro presenta releases, each featuring an individual SAJB performer, beginning with Andrea (2010), then Eva (2013), and Magali (2014).
And then came Rita.
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Josep Traver was instrumental (no pun intended) in bringing the young, diminutive musical sensation to the SAJB.
“I think Rita was 12 years old when she came to the Badalona music school,” he says. “Her parents were teachers in a primary school of music in a small town, and they have a connection with our music school. Sometimes when students are ending their studies at the smaller school, they come to Badalona. And her parents told us Rita, and Ruth Marguenda, were coming to our school. I was teaching a little ensemble, and they came to play with us. And I was amazed with Rita, and Ruth, because they were capable of reading any chart of music, and they had a very good pitch and intonation, and I asked Rita if she wanted to sing, and she said okay.”
“One time, I remember Joan asked me — he was looking for a trombone player for the SAJB, and asked if I knew a trombone player, and I told him, ‘Yes, I have a very talented little girl in my ensemble at the school, and I think she will fit so well with the band.’
So I presented Rita to Joan, and they started to play. And Rita was… wow!”
Rita was such an immediate sensation that Chamorro had her join Andrea, Eva, and Magali, who had already begun recording the first La Magia de la Veu (The Magic of the Voice) album of standards originally sung by American legends Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington, and Sarah Vaughn.
“In the beginning,” Magali explains, “it was Andrea, Eva and I for La Magia de la Veu, then I think Rita was in the SAJB already, but she was young. At some point Joan thought it’s going to be nice if Rita also joins this group, where everyone paid tribute to the great singers — Andrea was playing tribute to Sarah Vaughn, Eva to Dinah Washington, Rita to Ella Fitzgerald, and I to Billie Holiday.”
Was Rita, who was only 14 at the time, welcomed by the others?
“Yes, sure,” Magali says. “We didn’t have any problem. It’s always been a group thing, every Sant Andreu Jazz Band project is like, the more the better.”
David Casamitjana, the sound engineer we have to thank for so many superb SAJB live and studio recordings and presenta CDs, recalled in 2021 his first impressions of Rita as he watched her play.
“When they ask me about Rita,” he says, “I always tell everyone that I’ve discovered Rita by her sound, because we were in a sound check with a big band, and when her trombone sounded, I looked for that sound because it was incredible, and I saw a little girl, 13 years old, and it really shocked me. Since then we’ve worked together a lot, obviously with the Sant Andreu Jazz Band, and a lot of other projects.”
“Yes, it was something everyone could feel,” Andrea says of Rita’s arrival on the scene.
“Also, she started singing at the beginning when she entered the SAJB, and she always had this catchy voice and very nice interpretation, a mature way of interpreting at an early age. And at the trombone she was working hard, and one could feel it. I think everyone appreciated that she was very talented.”
As Chamorro wrote at the time, “It is my wish, for those who didn’t know the vocal jazz, that through this work and these young voices they become curious about and begin a journey of discovery of what may be a source of immense pleasure: Billie, Ella, Dinah, Sarah and other many voices, male and female, are waiting for them.”
Indeed, the young quartet succeeded in not only by expressing their respect for those legends throughout the album, but by introducing their own, personal sounds and voices together — not to mention their skills as instrumentalists. The phrase “the whole is greater than the sum of the parts” simply did not apply to them, as each individual consistently proved to be immensely talented on her own. Joining forces to sing and play together was a tremendous bonus. They became the SAJB’s “Fab Four.”
What is all the more remarkable is that, at the time of La Magia de la Veu, Eva, the eldest, was only 20, yet all of the girls’ understanding and feeling for jazz singing and musicianship was already clearly evident.
By this time, the SAJB had separated from the Escola Municipal de Musica de Sant Andreu, to become a self-contained, non-profit entity.
Chamorro explains, “The project had grown a lot and, due to considerations by the school management, it was better that the project not be part of the school, so we had to leave and find another space.” However, he continued to be part of the teaching staff at the school for two more years on a part-time basis, while devoting more time to the SAJB, “to make both activities compatible.”
Eventually, he decided it was necessary to make the SAJB project a full-time effort, and requested a leave of absence from the school, “which I still have,” he says, “after 9 years.”
He added, “Most of the members of the project came from the school itself, of which they were part, paying tuition and fees and having other parallel subjects. Now it is very different.”
But where could he hold rehearsals for the band, if not at the school? He turned to another music school in Sant Andreu where he was an educator.
“I had been a teacher at the Taller de Musics School of Barcelona, whose superior facilities were in Sant Andreu, near the Municipal school, and near my house. The management of the Taller de Músics very kindly agreed to let us do the rehearsals and some of the recordings in their classrooms, without paying any cost, something for which I will always be grateful.”
By the early months of 2013, the SAJB had grown into a quite substantial band — not only in size, but in its talent, potential, and the feeling of being a musical family.
The year would include highlights and additions that most in the SAJB world couldn’t fully appreciate at the time. As the year began, the band welcomed trumpeter Joan Mar Sauqué, who would become a powerhouse in the trumpet section alongside Andrea.
Victor Carrascosa would join the trumpet section that year as well.
“I’ve known Victor Carrascosa since he was about six years old,” says veteran trumpeter and SAJB guest Joe Magnarelli. “Victor is the son of accomplished musician, composer, and arranger Alfons Carrascosa, teacher at Taller de Músics and arranger for many SAJB selections.
Magnarelli recalls with a laugh, “I kicked Victor out of his bedroom one time ‘cause I had to take a nap before a gig. I was on tour with his father. So I kicked him out of his room so I could sleep, and that’s how we met! I’ve known him ever since, and I can’t wait to hear him more and more as he gets older.”
On March 27, the band performed two numbers for a television appearance on RTVE (Radio Televisión Española): Sidney Bechet’s “Si Tu Vois Ma Mere (If You See My Mother)” and Joe Venuti’s “Pretty Trix.”
By then, drummer Abril Sauri had joined the band and began occasionally sitting in on performances, alternating with Joan Aleix Mata, and would before long demonstrate that a petite girl with her skills and enthusiasm could propel a big band without unnecessary flash, yet with the rhythmic support a band relies on. Abril would also later take center stage as singer on a number of occasions.
At an April gig, Paula Berzal and Andrea celebrated their 18th birthday together.
That month, the SAJB’s tradition of bringing in distinguished American guest musicians continued in a big way, when tenor sax legend Scott Hamilton made his first journey to join the band in Barcelona.
“Joan’s very smart about musicians,” he says. “He’s always been close with the Spanish musicians, they all like him a lot. But he’s made [American] friends before me. There was a whole slew of guys I know who had already been over here, really good jazz musicians. He’s drawn people from all different areas of jazz.”
Hamilton first entered the SAJB world when he took part in the famous showcase for Andrea Motis at Barcelona’s Jamboree Club in April of ‘13. He had already known some of the pros who had been heavily involved in SAJB projects — drummer Esteve Pi, pianist Ignasi Terraza, and pianist/arranger Joan Monné.
“Basically, the connection was that I was a longtime colleague of Esteve Pi, Ignasi Terraza, and Joan Monné,” he says. “Esteve called me because I knew he was working with this teenage girl [Andrea] who was a big star in Spain, and they were getting a lot of concert dates. He called and said, ‘would you come and play for a week at the Jamboree?’ And I said yes, we’d love to come.” He added with a laugh, “None of my friends were available for gigs anymore because they were busy doing gigs with Andrea!”
Chamorro remembers, “I met Scott Hamilton many years ago, through his albums — solo, in a quartet, or alongside great musicians like Gerry Mulligan, Al Cohn, Zoot Sims, etc. My love for Ben Webster’s music, which influenced Scott in his early days, also led me to him. I started buying his albums and listening to him in depth…through contact with Esteve Pi, we brought him to record with Andrea Motis-Joan Chamorro quintet at the Jamboree in Barcelona, and from that meeting a beautiful ‘live at Jamboree’ album appeared.”
Hamilton continues the story: “On the Saturday of that week, they asked, ‘would you come out early and do this outdoor concert at the Plaza Reial and meet some of the kids?’ And that’s how that happened. Yes, that was all done the same week we did the videos and album with Andrea at the Jamboree Club.”
The joyous concert provided a major highlight for Elia, still in her first year with the band, as she performed superb solos on both “Minor Swing” and “China Boy.”
“For ‘Minor Swing,” she says, “I played part of the Stephane Grappelli solo, and the second part is mine, but that’s the process Joan uses for new students−of learning the solos of the [original] musicians, then you start to create your own solo.”
Chamorro recalls, “Songs like ‘My Baby Just Cares for Me,’ ‘China Boy,’ ‘Georgia on my Mind’ made the lindy-hoppers who filled the square dance. It’s a wonderful memory of a happy atmosphere, with lots of smiles, lots of good energy and lots of good music. Scott had come with his wife and I remember eating with them in a restaurant in the square. He was and is a kind person. He knew us before that meeting and admired our work. Everything went incredibly well.”
As with all of the professional musicians who have played with the SAJB as guests, Hamilton was quite impressed by what he saw and heard from the teen and pre-teen musicians at that first concert.
“It’s astonishing,” he says, “because I’m not a teacher, I haven’t spent a lot of time around people trying to teach jazz to young people, but this was different than any sort of jazz education that’s ever existed before, in the sense that everybody there had a natural enthusiasm, and natural kind of understanding of the music, and a natural feeling of the music. And that’s something that you only ever saw in individuals before this, never a group of people who played individual styles and had this kind of spirit and abilities.”
As a side note: A month after the outdoor concert at the Plaza Reial, two future couples performed onstage at the Jamboree Club, the SAJB’s de facto second home for their gigs in the Barcelona: Andrea and Austrian jazz violinist Christoph Mallinger; and Joan Chamorro and Elia (accompanied by Ignasi Terraza and Esteve Pi).
Mallinger remembers, “We first met playing a session when Andrea was 13 and I was 23. When she was 15 or 16, I invited Joan Chamorro and her to Vienna, back in the days when I had a group, Sugar Daises Hot Club. They joined us for a concert tour. We played Salzburg and Vienna, some others, but that was the first official concert.”
Still more highlights and accomplishments for the band were to come later in 2013 and 2014, which we’ll revisit in Part 3.
See you then!
If you missed Part 1 of this series, you can click the link below:
The Sant Andreu Jazz Band at 20 (part 1) | by Garry Berman | Feb, 2026 | Medium
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