May Peters Living in the Moment Philip Biggs

Photo: Vanesa San Emeterio.

May Peters. Photo: Fernando J Montano

I have long been aware of the fine reputation of multi talented musician May Peters. May can

effortlessly transfer from jazz trombone, be it tenor or bass, to arranging, be a big band director, organist, through to teaching Spanish language, not to mention author and trombone professor. An impressive list for a CV, I’d say!

May’s whole approach to life and music is totally holistic. Chatting to May, she tells me that each day starts with thirty minutes of meditation - and that’s before any practice. May moved from The Netherlands to Puerto Rico in 1994 and has lived there ever since, travelling between the Island of Enchantment and Europe. Her routine is cycling and every other day May cycles some 50 kilometres along her ‘Energyroute’ which is by the Atlantic Ocean shore from San Juan to Loiza. May tells me that this is the ultimate way to connect to the universe.

May toured extensively through Europe and beyond when she was a member of the Glenn Miller Memorial Orchestra. She has toured in Holland, Germany, France, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, Monaco, Italy, Sweden and Tunisia, and performed in 27 countries around the world as a trombone player, big band director and a lecturer about Latin music.

May Peters was born in 1964 in Echt, Netherlands and grew up on a farm at Zwaantjeshof in Berkelaar-Echt, the most southern province of Holland. She started to play the flute at the age of five and three years later started to study horn, becoming a member of a woodwind ensemble. Growing up in the culture of the southern area of Holland with a lot of Catholic feasts, she loved to celebrate carnival and joined the band that accompanied the Prince of Carnival.

When she was ten May wanted to become a missionary (she corresponded

with a local missionary in Africa), at age fourteen her choice of profession was journalism (interviewing teachers and writing cartoons and plays), but when she was fifteen she decided to become a musician. Finally, after some decades, she would become a professional in all three.

At fifteen May switched to trombone, but also played electronic organ. In 1987 she graduated from the Conservatory-Maastricht in ´Electronic Organ´ Keyboard/Synthesizer. Three years later May graduated from the Conservatory Hilversum where she studied ´Trombone Jazz´ (Popular music) with Bart van Lier. Her final concert was a delicious menu of all kinds of musical styles. She presented herself as the all-round musician she is: with an Original Old Style band, her bebop quintet Jazz It Up with saxophone player/composer Carolyn Breuer, big band, Brazilian - and salsa music. Later on she performed on stage as a tenor and bass trombone player, and was an arranger/copyist and big band director.

When I asked May about her strongest influences during her education, she was quick to point to the brothers Bart and Erik van Lier. “Bart had a Buddist/Eastern philosophy,” May told me. “He taught about stepping out of one’s ego. The secret is to connect with the universe, or whatever you want to call

it. And be a medium. He was very into a relaxed way of playing and to achieve that he started with Remington (Clark) - completely the opposite of the Arban method. He wrote his book ‘Coordination for Trombone playing’ when I was a student of his. His relaxing exercises are yoga based. His brother Erik was also my teacher

before that (he actually is a yogi). He was the analytical one, Bart was all about emotions! Erik was also the big band director and every two weeks we had these unforgettable section rehearsals where Erik taught the right attitude to play in a section. Erik’s philosophy was that you had to have elephant ears and

that you should be able to imitate your neighbour on the spot!”

May’s big passion from the age of 16 was the Big Band. She has played in a number of big bands including the Jazz Orchestra of the Royal Concertgebouw, the Ramblers and the Glenn Miller Orchestra (Germany). May’s other big passion is pop and soul music, which she loves to play. She started out in the Belushi Memorial Blues Brothers Band and many other Dutch and German pop groups (on keyboard, trombone and as an arranger). But her true passion is

salsa, starting out with an Antillean band in 1991. Soon afterwards she was playing with the Venezuelan Band, Javier Plaza y su Orquesta Son Risa. It was in Paris France in 1993, where she talked with Puerto Rican bass player Tomas Pérez, who convinced her to go to Puerto Rico to study the salsa culture.

Following her return to the Netherlands in 1995 May studied Spanish - out of homesickness for the Caribbean - and gained her teacher’s degree after two years.

Shortly afterwards, she became the musical director of Big Band Beeg, Grevenbicht where she transcribed, arranged and directed a Mambo project, arrangements of the Latin Big Band Era New York : Fiesta Latina with guest musicians from Venezuela such as Javier Plaza (vocals and percussion), Gerardo Rosales (percussion), Jorge Martínez (piano) from Cuba, Randal Corsen (piano) Curaçao, and Thomas Böttcher (piano) Germany and Daniel Patriasz (percussion) Holland.

In May 1998 the Royal Dutch Embassy of the Netherlands asked May to represent the Netherlands at the Euro Day Gala, as director of the Big Band from the Music Academy Gauteng, South Africa. From 2000 until 2003 May was the musical director of the Blue Basement Big Band (Swinging Sounds) Hoevelaken. From 2002 until 2006 May taught Spanish at the University of Applied Sciences, Utrecht and Tilburg, Holland. She played with clarinetist Bernard Berkhout in the New Orleans Syncopators with whom she

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The award winning CD. Tributo de Tambor y Trombón en Clave de Mujer Boricua.

recorded a CD, Midnight in Moscow, in January 2006. In September of that year she left for Puerto Rico, where she accepted the post of teacher of Trombone Jazz and Caribbean Music at the Conservatory of Puerto Rico.

PB May, could you tell me about your recent CD release - Tributo de Tambor y Trombón en Clave de Mujer Boricua. How long was this recording in the planning?

MP In Puerto Rico - not to say the Caribbean - you don’t plan, because you never know what is going to happen in the next hour! My motto is Ruben Blades’ version of Pedro Navaja (his variation of Mac the Knife!) - ‘La Vida te da sorpresas, sorpresas te da la vidaaa’. Life gives you suprises. I had my first meeting with Eric Figueroa in April 2012, to do research and collect the songs,

PB Over what period did you record the music?

MP The band recorded the basis on 2, 3 & 4 August 2012 (bass, piano, drums, timbales, bongo, conga,cajón, pandaretas and Pedro Guzman on cuatro). And I did two songs. I did my recordings in December after I got back from two months in the Netherlands. Then the Brasilian percussion (eight tracks!), an extra cuica track and chékere, and the small percussion: güicharo, güiro, maracas. Greg recorded his guitar solo with dengue fever! (La Oportunidad.)

We finished the mastering on 25 April 2013. In the meantime I worked for four months on the 28 page booklet with journalist Miguel López, collecting the unique pictures and the photoshoots with photographer and art designer Vanesa San Emeterio, and editing the text in Dutch and English too!

PB May, you are in the thick of things at the moment promoting your new album. Please can you tell readers about your promotional tour.

MP Ever since the CD release in November, I’ve been on TV and radio shows weekly and giving interviews for newpapers and magazines. My manager Angel Ilarraza plans a tour through every compass point on the island. Last week I did 15 interviews, for example. And I enjoy it a lot, because I immediately feel and hear the reactions of Puerto Ricans, starting out with the radio hosts, who are all are enthusiastic. The audience call into the show or come to visit us at the studio and buy their signed copy. People call me on the phone after the radio shows and tell me how beautiful the music is. It’s so nice! But the Dutch press have also dedicated time to my album, and they are playing it on the radio in the US, México, Venezuela and Colombia.

PB How is your CD being received?

MP The Fundación Nacional para la Cultura Popular nominated Tributo de Tambor y Trombón en Clave de Mujer Boricua ranks 9 of the Top 20 Best Albums of 2013 of Puerto Rico. I received wonderful reviews from the US, Puerto Rico and Europe. What I noticed at the CD presentation in a full Teatro Arriví in Santurce was that the Puerto Rican

people loved it, singing and dancing to it! They all knew the original versions of the female composers. And they are very surprised and touched by Eric Figueroa’s innovative arrangements and my different approaches of trombone playing. It looks like they never heard these classics in this way. Nor did they see it! The fact that I was not born and raised here, and am female is an even bigger curiosity. I’m touched to hear Puerto Rican’s say: “Now you are ours! You are more boricua then the coquí.” (The little frog which only exists on this island.) Telling me how proud they feel, how lovely it sounds. Of course thanks also to the

wonderful musicians who recorded it (40 percussion instruments!) and the marvellous sound and recording engineer Kiko Hurtado. I receive so many messages from Puerto Ricans abroad, asking me to send them a CD to the USA, because it also includes at 28 page booklet with biographies written by journalist and historian Miguel López Ortiz in Spanish, English and Dutch and wonderful pictures of the eight great composers. The press already say it’s a collectors item. I received this message from a listener in New York after the radio show Son del Caribe on Radio Universidad: “I just wanted to express how great it is to have someone from outside the Puerto Rican culture appreciate and love the true culture and music of our island. What really caught my attention was the fact that you are

teaching other nations of Puerto Rican salsa, bomba and plena. This is fantastic, also sad to know that our own people do not take the extra steps that you took in adapting the music of other great composers and recording it as part of our cultural heritage. It swelled my heart with cultural pride.” And there are many Puerto Ricans who identify themselves with me and with her. El Nuevo Día wrote that I am adopted now! Puerto Ricans are very tender in expressing their appreciation. I consider them as the most wonderful audience an artist can have!

PB It seems to me that your musical and cultural work in Puerto Rico is evangelical and ambassadorial. How do you see it?

MP It’s my Dharma, my destiny. It has nothing to do with religion! But it’s all to do with love, with sharing, with enriching. And I do feel a cultural embassador of Puerto Rico. I still feel the colonial heritage on one hand and the cultural richness on the other. And because of the fact I wasn’t born here, I don’t feel any limitations in letting the world know about Puerto Rico’s musical treasure. I am not a victim, I am a creator. For example, I gave a latin clinic with Puerto Rican music at the State Orchestra of Tyva-Siberia, in Estonia in October 2011. I directed these Mongolian musicians, who played Puerto Rican

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May the entertainer.

May during a CD signing.

plena after two hours. When they went home, three days on the Trans Siberian Express, they were whistling Temporal, Temporal, a famous Puerto Rican plena song. For me the ultimate reward of my ambassadorial work.

PB May, I would be hugely grateful if you could tell readers of The Brass Herald about your work as a jounalist and author.

MP After starting as a trombone teacher at the Department of Jazz and Caribbean Music of the Conservatory of Music - Puerto Rico, I started writing for www.caribemagazine.nl in September 2007. Every three weeks I published an article about my experiences and the beauty of this island, its people and its cultural treasure. But in the meantime I was writing about real life to my friends and family, and the list grew longer every time as other people joined in because they laughed so much about the stories of daily life as a female, white, gay trombonist in a machista third world country that had been colonized for centuries! Without being conscious of it, I was writing my Caribbean debute ¡Música, maestra! which was published in July 2009 by Totemboek in Dutch.

In 2008 I went to Curacao to play again at the Tumba Festival. As always I’m accompanied by universe: someone called me to write a review of a classical concert for the newspaper Amigoe. The chief director called me immediately and

asked me to write for another newspaper, Antilliaans Dagblad, about music. I love to observe and to be with pure people so that’s what I write about.

PB Now, I must ask you this May - your love of cooking. I believe this is one of the big things in your life.

MP Yes, Cocinando Suave is a song title. And Salsa means sauce. And yes, cooking is the same as making music. You are creating something from scratch and your senses are going to enjoy it. The most beautiful thing is to share it, either music or food. Cutting food is meditating. Like in music, I love pure tastes. Alas, Puerto Rican cuisine is rather primitive, cheap food (which isn’t cheap at all nowadays, but it was a century ago). Red beans (they didn’t take as long to cook as the other kind of beans, so used less energy) and pork (they are crazy about lechón and roasted pork, which is found in the mountains and is typical Christmas food.)

Puerto Rican Christmas is a two month feast and party - música navideña (agunaldos), rum pitorro (an illegal rum which is prepared months before under the ground with fruits such as pineapple, tamarinde and coconut) and typical desserts such as tembleque (coconut water, sugar, milk). So I cook fresh things: shrimps, salmon (from Chile!), dorado. Vegetables are a crime over here! Too expensive and not fresh enough. But okay, I left the Indonesian cuisine in Holland (as a former colony, there is big tradition over there). You can find me in the kitchen for half a day when I’m in Holland, but here in Puerto Rico I use the quick Chinese kitchen, although I don’t have the high fire I long to. So I make bok soy with shrimps and ginger with a little garlic, or broccoli with jalapeño and ansjovis, a paella or a nasi goreng. But also a Mexican seviche is wonderful in this climate, with fresh limes, lots of coriander, a touch of ginger and fried yuca.

My happiest time of the week is Sunday evening. I clean my house to the sounds of A Puro Bolero on Zeta 93 (all old boleros which touch your heart and soul directly) and make a mofongo of yuca (the Puerto Rican plate of fried yuca or plantain, chicharón, garlic and you fill it up with whatever you like). And I love to drink a Santa Helena Chardonnay (Chile) with it, or the Argentine Alamos.

By the way, I know a lot of trombone players who are excellent cooks! We are the Burgundian people with a nice Indonesian cigar (this Cuban takes me an hour and then I’m out!) and a fine cognac. That’s how we did it on our tours with the Glenn Miller Orchestra and the Glenn Miller Memorial Orchestra in Europe. Here you don’t see that. Puerto Rico has become too American. But I’m glad I was raised on a farm, so there still is this old fashioned feeling of independence in me. I decide what I eat, how, when and at what temperature. Here I don’t drink cognac, but I prepare myself a mojito with hierba buena, or a piña colada. In my Catholic background there is the importance of abundance - especially on the table (the south of Holland is Catholic, as is the whole continent of Latin America). Although I despise the hypocrisy of the Catholic church, I guess that’s what made it so much easier to live here than when I moved from the south to the centre of Holland (150 km), crossing the big rivers - something the Romans hadn’t done centuries ago. So that’s why the Dutch are very direct, open, something that other people can see as brutal, selfish, ‘big mouthed’ (Calvinistic, so they don’t eat too much ...etc). But I lived there too for 15 years, so I took the good things from every place that I lived!

PB Finally, if you had the chance to make a change in the world with one musical matter and one non musical matter, what would they be?

MP ‘Be the change in the world you want to see’ is a quote from Gandi.

Through my consciousness, I hope to stay in touch with the beauty within. And what comes out then are only good vibrations (The Beach Boys), which get the best out of other people. My experience already is that good attracts good. Love attracts love - the reactions of the Puerto Ricans last Sunday at the presentation! They gave me hugs, they kissed me, they told me the kindest things! My CD is such a proof of this cosmic law; now I only want to continue making beautiful things.

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