Born: December 3, 1979 Primary Instrument: Vocal
Cuban-born Ileana Santamar-a grew up in a musical household with a dream to carry on the legacy of her father, Cuban percussionist and Latin Jazz pioneer Ramón “Mongo” Santamar-a. If this dream was certainly nurtured by her father’s sterling example of what remarkable fruits the dedication and commitment to making music professionally can bear, it was also helped to flourish by Ileana’s music loving mother’s efforts to take her young daughter to Cuba year after year, to allow Ileana’s soul to take root in the musical traditions of a native land that, without those trips, would otherwise have been as good as foreign soil. Thus Ileana “Junior” forged a lifelong connection with Cuban rhythms, songs, dances, and Santeria chants, to street rumbas and Yoruba dance while already in her teens.
Living in the United States, spending time in Haiti and Honduras, traveling throughout Central America, the Caribbean, Europe, Africa, and the Arab world have all enriched Ileana considerably from a musical standpoint, and after nearly a decade of music and dance study and of performing professionally, dancing, singing, writing music, lyrics, and spoken word pieces, and having acquired quite a bit in the way of musical, artistic, cultural, and linguistic skills (she’s fluent or near-fluent with native speaker accent in six languages) and abilities by the age of 26, Ileana looks forward to continuing to learn and grow musically and artistically throughout a performing career that already is rich in promise. Before stepping out as frontwoman and bandleader in 2004, Ileana's distinctive timbre and commanding stage presence was already in demand, leading to collaborations and guest appearances at venues such as the Jazz Gallery, Town Hall, and the Duke and Joyce Theaters with renowned musicians on the New York scene, such as Peter Apfelbaum, Max Pollak, Octavio Cotán, Yosvany Terry, Candido Camero, Craig Handy, Dafnis Prieto, Robby Ameen, and Rubén Rodriguez, to name a few.
Ileana founded her own ensemble, the Ileana Santamar-a Orchestra, in 2004 after working with a number of New York-based Afro-Cuban and Afro-Brazilian folkloric music and dance ensembles. Her project brings together the talent and experience of musicians who are, for the most part, her elders, but who share her youthful energy and passion for the rhythms and melodies that are their common language. Co-founders include saxophonist, flutist, arranger, and composer Paul Carlon, percussionist, vocalist, and dancer Pedro Mart-nez, pianist and composer John Stenger, and drummer Ernesto Simpson. These and other top-flight musicians collaborated on the Orchestra's first release, “What I Want”, which features five of Ileana's original compositions and which Ileana produced and released herself in 2005.
Ileana regards the Orchestra as a vehicle to connect with hundreds of friends-to-be, members of audiences nation- and worldwide. Her fiery stage presence and engaging manner of interacting with the public, making them realize that they are part of the show, make clear that her mission is to spread the joy and the diverse wealth of world music in general and the musics of the African Diaspora in particular. On a personal level, it is, for her, also an opportunity to creatively weave together the many strands of her own development, as lyricist, as singer, as dancer, as language buff and to make her expressive mark. In addition, Ileana continues to work with other projects, such as the Paul Carlon Octet, Max Pollak's RumbaTap, and Afro-Cuban rumba ensemble Ibboru.
Since 2004, the Orchestra has performed to Jazz festival audiences in New York City (Women’s Jazz Festival 2004 and 2005-Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture) and Syracuse, NY (2005 Jazz in the Square Festival, with a rousing set that brought audiences to their feet, dancing and singing along to “I Want What I Want”, the infectious title track of the Orchestra’s first release, as an opener for Joshua Redman and the Elastic Band). Other performances include appearances at New York City world music club Satalla, in the General Assembly Hall of the United Nations for the UN Staff Day Concert, and at the 2005 Cultural Celebration at the African Burial Ground, discovered in 1991 to be the burial site used by African slaves in New York City. This summer, Ileana looks forward to more Orchestra engagements at Jazz festivals, including the West Oak Lane Jazz and Arts Festival in Philadelphia, PA, and the Fidelity Investments Park City Jazz Festival
