One musician’s dream of bringing Latin jazz to Hartford lives on after death

The July concert is still called Ramon Santiago’s Salsa Meets Jazz Festival because in many ways, Santiago’s influence is just as strong now — in death.

“Ray was kind of the epitome of what I would call a Hartford legend,” said Matt Chasen, who has been leading the fest since Santiago’s death in 2019.

Santiago, musician and founder of Salsa Meets Jazz in 2011, was born and raised in Hartford in the former Charter Oak housing unit.

“Which at this point in time, [it] looks very different than it did when Ray was growing up,” said Chasen. “He, as a child, was exposed to music in a myriad of different ways, and with three or four childhood friends, he formed several different bands during his adolescence.”

Santiago was self-taught, and his personality shone through in his music, which represented both his Puerto Rican culture and his generation.

“Ray was a child of the 1970s, so his influences were as wide-ranging as classic salsa, like Héctor Lavoe and Eddie Palmieri, to James Brown, Parliament, Funkadelic,” Chasen said. “To jazz musicians, like Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Miles Davis.”

Eventually, Santiago founded the local salsa-jazz ensemble Orquesta Espada, which toured up and down the East Coast for the next three decades. It was with this group that he started the Hartford festival, centered around their discography and the genre as a whole.

Now in its 14th year, the lineup has snagged an especially big name: Zaccai Curtis, a Connecticut native who just won the 2025 Best Latin Jazz Album Grammy Award for “Cubop Lives!”

“Despite the fact that Zaccai is a Grammy Award winner and could be playing anywhere in the world of his choosing, when I contacted him earlier this year about playing, immediately, his answer was, ‘Of course, I'm there,’” Chasen said.

Along with Curtis, the event includes performances from his brother, Damian Curtis, percussionist Nelson Bello and trombonist Emmett Goods, among others. The concert is free, thanks to backing from Santiago’s daughter and the Parkville Senior and Community Center. It’s also hosted pretty prominently, right in front of the Connecticut State Capitol.

“Bushnell Park really never ceases to amaze me, because I mean it literally is where all roads meet in Hartford,” Chasen said. “And to have the state capitol … just looming right there, it's incredible. And the ease of access, with respect to Union Station, if you have folks that are taking the train or taking the bus. You know, it's got everything that we could want.”

As this year’s festival came together, accessibility was top of mind for Chasen.

During the academic year, Chasen teaches music at Cooperative Arts and Humanities High School in New Haven. He says it’s events like this that provide the supplementary education for kids that often inspires them to stick with the arts — something that also impacted him as a teenager learning to play saxophone.

“What made music so tangible for me was being able to see people who were masters of their craft,” Chasen said. “When you're engaged in the actual creative process, whether you're an audience member or a performer or a neutral observer, that's really when it's most impactful.”

So, to be clear: The festival’s target audience is music lovers. Period.

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Salsa Meets Jazz performances run from 2 to 6 p.m. this Saturday, July 26 at the Thomas D. Harris IV Pavilion in Hartford’s Bushnell Park.