Jamie Dubberly is part of the Pacific Mambo Orchestra, which is a 3 year old band, made up of mostly bay area musicians that was nominated in the Best Tropical Latin Album category, alongside people like Marc Anthony, Sergio George, and others. Pacific Mambo Orchestra is an entirely independent project that was competing with Sony Music Latin in most cases, huge labels. Band leaders Christian Tumalan and Steffen Kuehn (a Mexican born pianist, and German born trumpet player) put together a band of local bay area Latin players. Jamie has been heavily involved in that scene as a trombonist, and has been active in many bay area Latin bands for the last 6-7 years.
Pacific Mambo Orchestra raised money to record an album through the crowdfunding platform KickStarter. The concept was music that is rooted in the Mambo music of Tito Puente, Mario Bauza, and others, but also with a modern twist , incorporating R&B and heavy jazz influences, and being all original compositions or original arrangements of well known songs ( like Stevie Wonder’s “Overjoyed”) The album eventually got the attention of Columbia Artists Management, and a scaled down version of the band ( the full band is 19 pieces) were invited to a 6 week national with Tito Puente Jr, Willy Torres and others as guest artists. After this, the band was on the “radar” of the national Latin music scene and this played a large role in the album being nominated. At the 2014 Grammy Awards against perhaps, all odds, the PMO album was announced as a winner.
Jamie explains, “I am very happy to be a part of this huge project, which includes a large number of musicians. I probably won’t get my own copy of the famous gramophone statue,but from what I hear, all the members will receive a plaque naming them as a 2014 Grammy winner . I am of course, very grateful and honored to be a part of the group, and look forward to great things happening with it in the future”.
A new album is already in the works, and Jamie hopes to contribute as both a trombonist and arranger. The CD is available on CD baby, as well as digitally on all the online outlets, such as iTunes, Amazon, etc. The name of the album is Pacific Mambo Orchestra.
They will be performing next in Santa Rosa on Feb 15 at the Santa Rosa Salsa festival. See below for a link to the band’s website so you can find photos, and more information .
In the provided photo, Jamie Dubberly is back row left in the photo at the Grammy nominee celebration for the SF Grammy chapter. http://www.pacificmambo.com/
Jamie also leads his own Latin jazz group, which has an album releasing soon, produced in the same studio as the PMO album. The name of the band is Orquesta Dharma, and the first album also won awards (see below). The new album, which will be called ‘La Clave de la Gumbo” fuses the sounds on afro-Cuban jazz and salsa with New Orleans 2nd line brass band music. They have a successful KickStarter campaign to help fund the album, and hope to take the album as far possible. Many of the PMO members are also in this band, and are very excited about this album too!
Local Modesto artist Jim Christiansen, has provided a wonderful cover image for the album.
Jamie Dubberly www.orquestadharma.com
Orquesta Dharma- Road Warrior : ” 2011 Next Generation Latin Jazz Album of the Year”- Latin Jazz Corner
“The Northern California-based trombonist/composer/arranger/educator Jamie Dubberly displays good vibes via the up-tempo ambiance and brilliantly tight arrangements of “Road Warrior,” his debut as bandleader and record producer……. a distinctively refreshing and powerful sound” – Rudy Mangual, Latin Beat, April 2012
