Santa Barbara News-Press Sunday, September 17, 1995
One need look no further than Susie Hansen for proof positive that the Renaissance Man is alive and well in the ‘90's--only she's a woman.
Hansen has a master's degree in electrical engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and classical training on the violin at the knee of her father, a 35-year veteran of the Chicago Symphony. But she shelved academia more than a dozen years ago after rediscovering jazz and now leads one of Southern California's most popular Latin/jazz groups.
Hansen appears today at SOhO, a special early evening show that also includes a dinner featuring Latin food. Locals are already familiar with the fiery violinist from her kinetic performance at the Santa Barbara International Jazz Festival last year. Following Hansen's example of bopping and dancing during her solos, the audience boogied in the sand throughout the set.
"Most of the bands who played before us were mellow and laid back, so people were really ready to get up and move," Hansen said over the telephone recently from her home in Los Angeles. "So we hit them with the big guns right from the first note. We just started high and got higher."
It was a first hand display of what caused Hansen to turn from math to music after graduating from MIT, a journey that has led from rock 'n' roll to straight-ahead jazz and eventually to the Latin grooves that have been the main objects of her affections for seven years.
"I just love the rhythm," Hansen said. "It appeals to me on a heart level. It gets in my soul."
Despite her in-bred love of music, Hansen had laid down her violin for seven years before a friend asked her to sit in with his rock band after her senior year in college.
"I discovered I was a natural," Hansen recalled. "I could find my way into the key and the rhythm and just play immediately and instinctively. It was very gratifying. I remember thinking, ‘This is so much fun. How could I have let it go?'"
Hansen stayed with the math track through MIT, but continued to play music, eventually immersing herself in jazz. "It's so sophisticated and complicated that even if you can do everything else instinctively, you still have to study jazz," she explained. "You have to understand the harmonies and know what's been played before, acquire a vocabulary. I listened to a lot of records and even transcribed solos so I could relate to what has been there before."
Hansen returned to Chicago in the mid '80s, started her own band and delved into be-bop. Then fate intervened in the person of Victor Parra, who heard her play following his set at a festival, and immediately asked her to join his Mambo Express All-Stars. It was Hansen's introduction to Latin music.
"I had never played it before, but he said, ‘Don't worry, you'll get it.' I picked it up right away. It was so dynamic and energetic that I was really hooked."
That gig lasted three months, then Hansen returned her focus to her own band, until musical stagnation prompted a move to L.A. "I had turned into a society band leader," she said. "I did some jazz gigs, but I was making my money at dinner dances, charitable balls and other big events. I needed to make a stab at doing something more creative."
Although she came to L.A. seeking outlets for jazz, Hansen immediately fell in with Bongo Logic and Bobby Matos. When Francisco Aguabella (who played at SOhO last month), offered her a spot in his group, all the Latin urges came rushing back.
"I'd forgotten how exciting this music was," she said. "And again I learned on the job. I took my tape recorder and recorded all the gigs, went to the original source for songs we did and learned how it had been done before, then wrote and designed my own parts."
But Hansen also distinguished herself by not imitating other violinists, instead looking to broader possibilities of other instruments in the combo. "I listened to violinists to understand what they did, but most of them are limited by how they view their instrument. They don't have as sophisticated a concept as a horn or piano player, so I decided I'd learn more by watching them."
The hard work paid off when Hansen started her own Latin-jazz ensemble a year and a half later, quickly becoming one of the city's best-loved purveyors of the music. Not that it didn't take people a while to get used to the idea of a blonde female band leader playing Latin jazz on the violin.
"Yeah," Hansen laughed. "It's three very unusual things, and I get all kinds of reactions. People doubt that it will work before they hear me play. They wonder if I can do it as a woman, if a violin will work in a Latin/jazz setting or how I can play this music if I wasn't born to it."
Native or not, Hansen has embraced Latin music from salsa to charanga (the society music of Cuba from the 1920s to the '50s) with rampant enthusiasm, often using her violin to fulfill three roles. She replaces the trumpet in her band's horn section, handles the piano's lines in salsa and charanga passages and takes extended solos in the jazz portion. Frequently the mix comes within the context of a single song.
"It helps to keep me interested," she said.
Composing and arranging songs for her second album have also taken much of Hansen's attention recently. The first disc, "Solo Flight," which was released on her own label last year opened doors to larger gigs, although it has just barely begun to break even. Major labels express interest but balk at signing Hansen. It's the foibles of a genre that is considered to have little mass appeal. "We're in a small slice of a small slice of a pie," said Hansen. "People don't know how to market us."
Still, Hansen has no intentions of abandoning Latin jazz, which has held her focus for nearly a decade. Nevertheless, she knows she'll have little trouble adjusting if something more exciting should come her way.
"I've always relied on having a really good ear," she said. "That's how I could have the chutzpa to go back to music after getting a master's degree. It's a gift. I can hear something and I can play it. There's no figuring it out. It's just immediate."
Susie Hansen brings her Latin jazz band to SOhO, 1221 State St., upstairs in Victoria Court, for a dinner concert today from 4 to 7 p.m. For more information and reservations, call 966-3877.