Like a rich, flavorful New Orleans gumbo, Los Hombres Calientes packs a little bit of everything into a tasty, powerful recipe that warms the body and feeds the soul. Founded in New Orleans in 1998, Los Hombres Calientes began to take the world by storm. Their self titled debut album won the prestigious Billboard Latin Music Award for Contemporary Jazz Album of the Year. Audiences everywhere fell in love with the feel and the vibe and the rhythm of the band.
The group, led by Irvin Mayfield, the latest in the Crescent City’s illustrious line of acclaimed jazz trumpeters, and Bill Summers, a world-class percussionist who quite simply embodies world-wide rhythm, has not only changed the way music sounds, but also how music is made.
Taking a hands-on, organic approach in putting together their five albums, Volumes 1-5, Mayfield and Summers take their band on location and join forces with locals in order to create authentic sounds from the places where music began; locations such as Africa, Cuba, Trinidad, Jamaica, Haiti and, of course, their native New Orleans.Los Hombres Calientes released five albums between 1998 and 2005 but Hurricanes Katrina & Rita put an end to what was a very meteoric rise to success for the band. This success included 4 Billboard Latin Music Award nominations and 1 Grammy nomination.
Forced to leave New Orleans as a home base, many of the group’s members, including Bill Summers, found themselves relocated, making it impossible to keep Los Hombres Calientes together. Rebuilding their lives became their top priority. The years have now since passed and fortunately Irvin and Bill were able to reunite in the city they call home and to reunite many of the original band members. Thus, Los Hombres Calientes has been reborn.
Fast forward to present day, post-hurricane New Orleans, and it seems largely appropriate that Mayfield and Summers should once again tell the musical tale of Los Hombres Calientes and the city it was born in, especially given the extraordinary experience of survival and rebirth that grew out of the disaster that the city has endured. For this, the city’s resolve is ever-apparent in the personalities of both Mayfield and Summers and remains truer and stronger than ever. As much as their music starts from the beginning of New Orleans' rich cultural heritage, the "new" New Orleans, one rebuilding from a horrific natural disaster in the form of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, finds itself back at square one in many instances.
In addition to their work in Los Hombres Calientes, Irvin Mayfield and Bill Summers have earned their credibility in other arenas as well.
Mayfield is the City of New Orleans and State of Louisiana Cultural Ambassador and has positioned himself at the forefront of the rebuilding process currently underway in New Orleans. Sitting on several rebuilding committees and operating the not-for-profit New Orleans Jazz Orchestra, Inc. that is dedicated to returning the Crescent City to its lofty perch as Americas cultural Mecca. Appointed by both Presidents Bush and Obama, Irvin sits on the board of the National Endowment for the Arts and his New Orleans Jazz Orchestra won its first Grammy this past year.
Summers, who has worked with musical pioneers including Quincy Jones, Michael Jackson, Sting, Sonny Rollins and Herbie Hancock in his long, illustrious career, shares in Mayfield's thirst to uncover the musical roots of New Orleans' cultural tree of life. Summers worked as a musician and an arranger for such hit film & television projects as ‘Roots” and ‘The Color Purple’.
