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Jazz artist Lucia Sarmiento finally comes into her own
Freshly 30 and coming off a tour with popstar Pitbull, the Peruvian-born entertainer and educator is now back in Minnesota and reflecting on all she’s learned.
MINNEAPOLIS — More than 4,000 miles from where her life began, Lucia Sarmiento has never felt more at home.
“This is where my cats and my bed are; this is where my community is, you know, musicians. I’ve been living here for almost a third of my life.”
Freshly 30 and coming off a year-long tour with international popstar Pitbull, the Peruvian-born saxophonist, guitarist, composer, entertainer and educator is now back in Minnesota and reflecting on all she’s learned.
“I’ve played everything from funk, pop, jazz, to polka, to merengue — just everything,” Sarmiento said. “Now, with everything that I’ve absorbed, I can make my own music and integrate everything.”
She came to the U.S. from her hometown of Lima, Peru to study at the McNally Smith College of Music. A supportive and nurturing art community, coupled with Sarmiento’s raw talent and outright passion to play, allowed her the freedom to follow her instincts to create.
Drawing wide from influences across cultures, Sarmiento and her music continued to evolve. Meshing styles like Afro-Peruvian rhythm with jazz fusion and classical and electric guitar, the marriage of melody culminated in Sarmiento’s forthcoming debut album, which is set to be released sometime this summer.
“This first album, it is literally a mix of, you know, almost 30 years of existing in Latin America, and in the United States, and traveling and soaking it up,” she said.
Beginning in the fever dream of the COVID-19 pandemic, her album is now a palpable reality. But while Sarmiento admits a lot of her life thus far has been lived in a dream, she concedes that dream hasn’t necessarily always been one of her own.
“In 2018, I was fresh out of college and still kind of figuring out what to do with my life and my career. I wrote down my goals,” she said. “I wrote down, ‘In the next five years, I want to go on tour with a very big pop artist,’ and then, three years later, four years later, it happened.
“I was like, ‘Oh, my God, I’m living my dream.’ And when I was on the road, I actually realized that that wasn’t what I wanted to do; I felt like I was putting all my time and energy into somebody else’s project, or somebody else’s music — somebody else’s dream. I also wanted to create and to do my own thing. [Pitbull] has a vision and it’s his baby. I kind of wanted to do that.”
LISTEN: Escape by Lucia Sarmiento
While Sarmiento said the knowledge she gained on that tour was invaluable, both personally and professionally, a production of that magnitude didn’t come without its challenges. As the only woman in the international superstar’s band, Sarmiento was left to navigate a lot of it on her own.
“I mean, that comes with its advantages, but it also comes with its own set of difficulties — [like] how to handle a lot of social interactions. I had to learn how to stand up for myself,” she said. “[It] definitely has been a thing that I had to get over that I feel like a lot of my male counterparts don’t even think about. They just think about playing music and being happy. As a woman in a male-dominated environment, there’s more things you think about, you know?”
That’s part of the reason why Sarmiento also teaches music lessons via her YouTube channel and various clinics and masterclasses. She said the drive behind her desire to teach is to empower people, particularly women and Spanish speakers,
“I started posting videos in Spanish teaching the saxophone and teaching jazz lessons and music because there was not very much educational content in Spanish. So, I thought, ‘What about all the Latinos?’
“Almost all my private students right now are girls or younger girls, and it’s really cool because I kind of see myself in them. I’m trying to inspire them and help them.”
The lessons also include advice on the business side of things, a topic she says can be taboo for young artists coming up through the trade.
“From experience screwing up and getting screwed over by others, I have learned, and now I have a guideline to how I handle my artistry that is tied together with my livelihood. I’m trying to make this more of an open topic that people talk about, so hopefully, less people will get taken advantage of.”
But at the same time she feels pulled to help others, she’s ready to take her own art to the next level. Sarmiento will lead her band on stage at the popular Twin Cities jazz haunt Crooners Supper Club Thursday night, ready to showcase her three decades of life packaged carefully into her own songs, 10 of them brand new.
“It kind of feels like I’m throwing this very big party for me and my friends,” she said. “I ended up calling three background singers and background horns, and my plan to keep it small…didn’t work.”
And despite playing to tens of thousands of fans nightly over several months with Pitbull, the show at Crooners will be the artist’s first time to headline the bill. She’ll follow that up with a “mini tour” this summer in the Midwest, including another headlining gig on the first night of the Twin Cities Jazz Festival in June.
About to launch herself back out into the grind of being on the road, Sarmiento offers this guidance, applicable in both entertainment and existence:
“Come with an open mind.”
To get your tickets for Sarmiento’s Thursday show at Crooners Supper Club, click here.
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The U.S. Army says 19-year-old William E. Colby was reported missing in action on Dec. 2, 1950. His remains were identified just this year using DNA technology.
MINNEAPOLIS — Nearly 74 years to the day since he was officially deemed Missing in Action during the Korean war, a Minneapolis soldier finally reached his final resting place.
The burial at Fort Snelling National Cemetery, which came with full military honors, brought closure to the family of Army Corporal William Colby, but it couldn’t bring back the family – and memories – that have long since passed.
“I was little,” said Jinny Bouvette, Corporal Colby’s cousin, who is also among the few surviving family members who ever met him. “We were about nine years difference when he joined the service, I was ten.”
For years, Bouvette says her memories of her cousin Billy, were always clouded by sadness by what happened just months after he deployed to fight in the Korean War.
Colby was just 19 years old and serving in the Korean War when he was declared missing in action on Dec. 2, 1950, after his unit was attacked by the Chinese People’s Army as they attempted to withdraw from the Chosin Reservoir.
“They figure that’s where Billy was,” Bouvette said, pointing to a green circle on a printed map of the Chosin Reservoir. “That’s where he was the last time that he was reported (alive).”
The young soldier could not be recovered following the battle, and the U.S. Army issued a presumptive finding of death on Dec. 31, 1953.
“We never thought of him as being killed in action, we always thought of him as just missing,” Bouvette said. “My aunt, she always thought he was alive somewhere.”
His fate was finally confirmed for family members by the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency on May 2, 2024, after Colby’s remains were identified from 55 boxes of remains returned to the U.S. by the North Korean government in 2018.
The process required a DNA analysis of his remains and a sample from a living relative before it could be matched and verified.
Bouvette says representatives initially tried to reach her, but it wasn’t until learning that her aunt and cousin had submitted those DNA samples that she realized what was happening.
“At first I thought they were just people trying to scam old people, and I wouldn’t answer them,” she said, with a laugh. “But eventually, that’s how I found out that he was really, really gone.”
Just a few months later, the Army’s Past Conflict Repatriations Branch helped return his remains, along with a jacket adorned with a full accounting of his honors.
“He didn’t get them when he was alive,” Bouvette said. “So I told them to put them in the casket with him, so he’s got them now.”
She did decide to hold on to one of his awards for herself, Colby’s Purple Heart.
“I just can’t tell you what it feels like,” she said, looking at the military medal in her hand. “It fills your heart right up. It just fills your heart right up.”
Yet it can’t quite compare to seeing his procession finally reach its end.
“My heart is so full… it is overflowing,” she said. “I just can’t… I have no words. I’m just glad that he’s here, and to know he’s home now. He’s home.”
JayCee Cooper filed a lawsuit against USA Powerlifting after the organization banned her from participating in women’s competitions.
SAINT PAUL, Minn. — The conversation inside the Minnesota State Capitol on Tuesday was focused on sports, but a different type of competition was taking place inside the court chambers. Two opposing sides are vying for the Minnesota Supreme Court to rule in their favor in the case of Cooper v. USA Powerlifting.
Transgender woman and athlete JayCee Cooper filed discrimination charges with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights in 2019 after USA Powerlifting banned her from participating in women’s competitions. In 2021, Cooper filed a lawsuit against USA Powerlifting.
The lawsuit claims USA Powerlifting’s ban on transgender women is “an outlier among international, national and local sports organizations,” pointing to the International Olympic Committee’s framework regarding inclusion of athletes and their gender identities.
The case made its way through the state’s courts over several years before landing in the hands of the Minnesota Supreme Court. Oral arguments took place Tuesday morning, in which Cooper was represented by Gender Justice attorney Christy Hall and USA Powerlifting was represented by attorney Ansis Viksnins.
Gender Justice is a legal nonprofit organization based in St. Paul. In a press conference Tuesday morning, the organization’s legal director Jess Braverman said USA Powerlifting is violating Cooper’s rights under the Minnesota Human Rights Act.
“Every Minnesotan deserves the freedom to pursue their dreams without fear of exclusion or discrimination,” Braverman said. “Ms. Cooper was denied that right, solely because she is transgender.”
Viksnins, the attorney representing USA Powerlifting, said Cooper was excluded from women’s competitions due to her biological sex, not gender identity. “It’s not discrimination based on gender identity. That’s the problem for Ms. Cooper’s case: that the differentiation here was because of her biological sex, not for gender identity.”
In 2021, USA Powerlifting launched its MX category, providing a separate division for athletes of all gender identities. “It doesn’t solve the problem of transgender women being barred from women’s competitions, which is the issue here,” Braverman said.
There is no clear timeline as to when the Supreme Court will makes its decision on the case.
The portion of the Kellogg-Third Street Bridge over I-94 is coming down.
ST PAUL, Minn. — The portion of the Kellogg-Third Street Bridge over I-94 is coming down this weekend.
Demolition started in August but they’ve been doing one section at a time. MnDOT says to expect jackhammering around the clock.
City engineers first noticed cracks in its supports in 2014 and limited its capacity. But it’s taken 10 years for the city to come up with the $91 million it will take to build a new one, and it won’t be finished until 2027.
I-94 will be closed this weekend between 35E and Highway 61 in St. Paul.
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