High Octane Salsa and Latin Jazz
Seattle area percussionist/vocalist/composer Tor Dietrichson founded the band Tor Dietrichson with Mambo Cadillac in April of 2005. Since then the band has gone on to perform 300 plus concerts. The band has performed more times at The Triple Door Musicquarium than any other band, 100+, maybe 200 times, and also at Bumbershoot and twice headlined the 4Culture website launch party. They received a grant from 4Culture to record a CD of his original Latin compositions which will be released soon. Mambo Cadillac is his fourth Latin music ensemble.
When he saw an opportunity to perform at the beautiful Triple Door Musicquarium in April of 2005, Dietrichson founded Mambo Cadillac after some coaxing from two of the absolute best of the Seattle Latin music scene - Costa Rican vocalist Carlos Cascante, who is a Grammy award winning vocalist with the world famous Spanish Harlem Orchestra, and Mexican pianist Julio Jauregui. Carlos Cascante had been telling Dietrichson that he needed to start another band as it was his calling to be a bandleader and he needed to resume what he had started years ago both as a percussionist and a composer of various types of songs. Tor rounded up some of his other favorite musicians including percussionist Francisco Medina Jr. and bassist Dean Schmidt. Mambo Cadillac at times features various horn players and other guest percussionists and singers. Some of the horn players who have contributed are sax/flutist Jim Coile, trumpeter Thomas Marriot, trombonist Doug Beavers (from Eddie Palmieri’s band) and many others. Tor has been a member of many Seattle area bands with a list almost too numerous to mention.
The band features a wide variety of Cuban influenced music and utilizes a high degree of improvisation in the performances. Both vocalist Cascante and keyboardist Jauregui are tremendous improvisers and are veterans of the Seattle area Latin music scene. Mambo Cadillac plays a variety of Afro-Cuban vocal and instrumental music and is just starting to work on incorporating some of Dietrichson’s original compositions into their repertoire. Look for a recording of their music soon.
Dietrichson is a veteran of the world fusion musical movement who began his musical career while still a teenager in a band with world-renowned tabla virtuoso Zakir Hussain and Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart in Diga Rhythm Band, which released one album in 1976 titled Diga. The experience led Dietrichson to start his own Latin jazz band, ThunderGod and the Underdogs, shortened to The Underdogs where he played congas alongside some veterans of the Latin scene in San Francisco including Panamanian pianist Carlos Federico, saxophonist Martin Fierro as well as renowned guitarist Steve Kimock. His next project after moving back to Seattle from the Bay Area was another Latin band called Tambo and led to a recording contract with Global Pacific/CBS/Sony records.
Dietrichson is a highly trained tabla player who learned directly from India’s top two percussionists – Ustad Allah Rakha and his son Zakir Hussain. Dietrichson has two recordings which feature both Zakir Hussain and many other world renowned artists. His first CD, Global Village, charted high nationally and was distributed internationally by CBS/SONY records. It reached the number 2 spot on the New Age and number 7 on the New Adult Contemporary charts respectively. He then formed a Seattle area band also called Global Village, which has played frequently on the Northwest festival and club circuit since 1988. His second CD, Cosmic View is as yet unreleased.
