Gabrielle Cavassa’s San Diego Tijuana International Jazz Festival gig a full-circle moment
Gabrielle Cavassa has experienced a number of pinch-me moments in recent years, including recording and touring with jazz sax great Joshua Redman and winning the 2021 Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competition. She also shared the stage with Big Easy vocal great Germaine Bazzle at last year’s New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and signed an album deal with Blue Note, the prestigious record label whose roster includes Charles Lloyd, Norah Jones and San Diego State University alum Gregory Porter.
Come Saturday, Cavassa will have a new pinch-me moment to savor when she takes the stage at the second annual San Diego Tijuana International Jazz Festival. It runs Thursday through next Sunday on both sides of the border and features such Grammy-winning greats as pianist Arturo O’Farrill, bassist John Clayton and saxophonist David Sánchez. The festival — two-thirds of which is free to attend — launched last year with nearly $400,000 in seed money from Qualcomm co-founder and philanthropist Irwin M. Jacobs.
San Diego Tijuana International Jazz Festival sets lineup for its second year
Cavassa’s performance at California Center for the Arts, Escondido, will take place in her hometown. Moreover, it will be at the same venue where she sang her first solo number when she was a sophomore at nearby San Pasqual High School.
“My dad was a teacher at San Pasqual the whole time I was growing up. He used to take me to the school’s pops and Christmas concerts every year at the center, so it is a big source of inspiration for me,” said Cavassa, 29, speaking from her New Orleans home.
“Then, when I was in high school, I got to perform in Showtime, San Pasqual’s choir. That was a full-circle moment for me because I’d watched so many student performances there. And now, coming back to sing at the festival is an even bigger full-circle moment for me.”
Cavassa vividly recalls what she sang at the Escondido arts center as a high school student more than a decade ago.
“The first time I had a (vocal) solo was when I was a sophomore, so I would have been 14, and it was the Melody Gardot song, ‘Who Will Comfort Me?”, she said.
“The school’s dance team performed and the band played. But I was the only one singing up there and it was huge moment for me. I was so nervous beforehand! And afterwards, I was high on that performance until the next year’s pops concert. That was when I sang an Adele song, ‘Crazy for You.’ My senior year, I think I sang “Summertime’ because I had gotten into jazz at that point.”
Cavassa has rarely looked back since.
In 2021, some months after she won the elite Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competition, Cavassa caught the ear of Redman’s manager, Anne Marie Wilkins, who heard her perform at a party in New Orleans. Wilkins was so impressed that, for the first time in her several decades of working with Redman, she encouraged him to check out another musician.
Redman was similarly impressed after going online to hear Cavassa sing. So much so that he featured her extensively on his exquisite 2023 release, “Where Are We.” It is the first in Redman’s 32-year, 24-album career to team the protean saxophonist with a singer, let alone one who can put such a distinctive stamp on music by such diverse artists as Count Basie, Bruce Springsteen, Charles Ives, Rodgers & Hart, the Eagles, Jimmy Webb and Sufjan Stevens.
Cavassa’s wonderfully moving and nuanced performance on Redman’s album directly led to her being signed by Blue Note Records last year. Her debut album for the label, co-produced by Redman and Blue Note President Don Was, will be released next spring.
Was’ nearly 100 previous production credits include albums by Wayne Shorter, Bonnie Raitt, Bob Dylan, Jason Moran, Carly Simon, the Rolling Stones and Lucinda Williams. In a statement released last year after Blue Note signed Cavassa, Was said: “Listening to Gabrielle sing is an experience akin to having her whisper secrets in your ear. The intimate honesty of her storytelling is breathtaking — she will be a major musical presence for decades to come.”
Those sentiments are shared by Daniel Atkinson, who co-founded the San Diego Tijuana International Jazz Festival last year with veteran Tijuana concert producer and restaurateur Julian Plascencia.
“Learning Gabrielle was born and raised in Escondido piqued my interest, as did her winning the Sarah Vaughan International Vocal Jazz Competition,” said Atkinson, the longtime jazz-program coordinator at the Athenaeum Music & Arts Library in La Jolla and executive director of the Western Jazz Presenters Network.
“Then I had the chance to hear the outstanding album that features her with Joshua Redman. I was so impressed with her expressiveness and the really deeply musical way she interacted with him. So, I’m thrilled to have this opportunity to bring her here for this homecoming as part of the festival’s 2025 lineup in the city she is from.”
Inspired by Billie Holiday
Escondido was not remotely a hotbed for the music Cavassa loved. While San Pasqual High did not have a jazz ensemble or offer any jazz classes, she credits Brian Lund, her music teacher at the high school, for encouraging her artistic passion for all things jazz.
The teenaged singer also took a deep dive into the music online. She was especially inspired after hearing recordings by such vocal giants as Billie Holiday and Nancy Wilson, followed by Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Betty Carter and others.
“I was bit-torrenting entire discographies from the internet and learning different artists’ work, and Billie was my starting point,” Cavassa said.
“I read her autobiography. And I read the credits on the back covers of her albums and learned about those musicians. That’s how I got into Ben Webster, Lester Young, Teddy Wilson and Papa Jo Jones. I was checking out everybody and I was really drawn to improvising. That was what guided me into jazz. And I have a voice that is maybe a little more more similar to Billie’s than to Broadway, which is the other music I was exposed to at home “
Cavassa did not attend or perform her first jazz concert until moving away from Escondido. She earned a degree in jazz history at San Francisco State University while cutting her teeth singing at various jazz clubs in the Bay Area.
Armed with a robust musical appetite and a growing array of vinyl albums that she started collecting while living in Escondido, Cavassa moved to New Orleans in 2017. It was there that she developed her vocal artistry in new ways, building on the jazz traditions she cherished while adding a unique spin to her music.
Being a Big Easy resident also enabled her to listen to and befriend fellow singer Germaine Bazzle, who has long been hailed as “New Orleans’ First Lady of Jazz.”
“She was the most incredible jazz singer I’d ever seen,” said Cavassa, who proudly shared the stage with Bazzle at the 2024 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.
“Germaine is a master! Her entire attitude and approach are steeped in experience, and she sings everything with such joy and classiness. Nothing ruffles her. She’s been doing this for decades and decades and decades. I sang her song, ‘To You My Love,’ at last year’s festival.
“She’s 94 now and still sounds incredible. She’s a legend and I was very grateful to witness her when she was still performing regularly and commanding a band. I have learned a lot from her.”
Where many young jazz singers seek to dazzle listeners with their virtuosity and high-flying technique, Cavassa strives to find the emotional essence of every note she sings. The feeling behind each word is essential to her. So is the freedom to shape and reshape the lyrics to achieve maximum fluidity and emotional impact, and to make an impact through nuance and understatement rather than by showboating.
“In general, my criteria in selecting songs is being emotionally moved by the music,” she said. “And if I am moved, half the time I think: ‘I can do this,’ or ‘I should do this.’ Sometimes, I’m so moved by a piece of music that I don’t want to touch it.
“It’s been wonderful for me as an interpreter of songs. Now, I’m also moving toward writing more songs. It’s a real shift for me. But interpreting great songs of the past is something that is always very dear to me because I love music so much.”
Cavassa visits Escondido as often as her increasingly busy schedule allows. Her go-to places there include Chito’s Taco Shop and the recently opened Track City Records. She laughed heartily when asked if she would have a big guest list Saturday for her San Diego Tijuana International Jazz Festival debut.
“Well, luckily, my performance is free! Otherwise, it would be a very long list,” Cavassa said. “This will be my first time singing in Escondido since I was in high school and I can’t wait.”
Gabrielle Cavassa at the San Diego Tijuana International Jazz Festival
When: 7 p.m. Saturday
Where: Plaza stage (outdoors), California Center for the Arts, Escondido, 340 N. Escondido Blvd., Escondido
Admission: Free. The majority of Saturday’s festival concerts, including the all-star “James Moody @ 100” tribute performance, will be indoors and are ticketed.
Phone: 800-988-4352
Online: artcenter.org
San Diego Tijuana International Jazz Festival Saturday performance schedule
Free on the outdoor stage at California Center for the Arts, Escondido
Iván Trujillo Ensamble (3 p.m.)
Gabrielle Cavassa (7 p.m.)
Ticketed performance in the main theater at California Center for the Arts, Escondido
Lucía (4 p.m.)
“James Moody @ 100,” featuring David Sánchez, John Clayton, Gerald Clayton, Lewis Nash, Holly Hofmann & Gilbert Castellanos (5:30 p.m.)
Dinner break – food trucks or VIP option (6:30 p.m.)
Arturo O’Farrill & The Afro Latin Ensemble, with the Fandango Fronterizo Colectivo (8:15 p.m.)
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