Being nominated for a Grammy Award is an amazing accomplishment — especially when it happens more than once, as one University of Massachusetts Amherst professor knows.
Ben Barnett, an adjunct faculty member of jazz trombone in the Department of Music and Dance at UMass Amherst, has been nominated in the Best Latin Jazz Album category for his work on the album “The Original Influencers: Dizzy, Chano & Chico,” recorded under the direction of six-time Grammy winning pianist, composer and bandleader Arturo O’Farrill.
“It feels pretty good. It definitely feels surreal, I would say. The first one felt great, too. I’m definitely happy, and I’m definitely glad this happened, but in terms of my personal career, nothing much has really changed. I think that’s good, also. I would love to see the record win, which would be awesome. I feel like that would be drastically different, but it’s been a great, great experience,” Barnett said.
The album is a live recording of a 2023 performance at The Town Hall, a music venue in New York City, in honor of the September 1947 collaboration between Dizzy Gillespie and Cuban conga musician Chano Pozo, which was formative to the origin and dissemination of Latin jazz as a serious art form. As a Carnegie Hall blog post about the collaboration said: “The marriage of syncopated Cuban rhythms with the be-bop melodic virtuosity was to be a happy one.”
The show featured the 18-member Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra, which included Barnett, who has been collaborating with O’Farrill for over a decade through O’Farrill’s group Belóngo, formerly known as the Afro-Latin Jazz Alliance.
When asked why he thought the album should win, Barnett said, “Simply, my answer is: you should listen to this album, and then you’ll understand why I think that it should win. It’s very good — very, very good album, very special, very meaningful performance.”
Barnett’s previous Grammy nomination came in 2021 for “Virtual Birdland,” which was also a collaboration with O’Farrill in the Best Latin Jazz Album category.
Barnett has played trombone for 23 years. He’s performed in a number of renowned New York City jazz venues, including Birdland Jazz Club, Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, The Blue Note Jazz Club, the Village Vanguard, the Cotton Club, and Swing 46. He was also a manager of the renowned Smalls Jazz Club in Manhattan from 2016 to 2021. He now splits his time between western Massachusetts and New York City. As a UMass faculty member, he’s the leader of the Jazz Trombone Choir, which recently held its first performance.
“I love the program. It’s a beautiful school. It’s an incredibly dedicated staff at the School of Music and Dance. My personal boss, Jeff Holmes, is an incredible musician and an incredible human being. All the professors in the music department are really wonderful people,” he said.
Barnett started playing trombone as a kid, not because he was particularly drawn to it, but because his uncle chose it for him. His uncle loves marching bands, and he told Barnett, “There’s a lot of trombone in marching band, so you should play trombone,” Barnett recalled dryly.
While in band class in elementary school, Barnett selected the trombone as one of three instruments he might want to play, including saxophone and drums. His teacher chose him for the trombone, though, because he had long enough arms to play it.
“I’m thankful that she did, because I fell in love with it,” Barnett said.
One of his biggest draws for the trombone was that it could be very loud, he said.
“My whole goal as a child was, ‘How loud can I play? Can I play louder than everybody else?’” Barnett said. “And of course I could, because I would just try to play as loud as humanly possible for a 7-year-old to 10-year-old. And I would always ask my parents after every concert, ‘Could you hear me?’ I’m not sure if they could or couldn’t, but they always said yes. And it encouraged me to play louder and louder, which is the defining feature of trombone. It is loud.”
The 68th Annual Grammy Awards will be held Sunday, Feb. 1, 2026, in Los Angeles, and broadcasted on CBS and available to stream on Paramount+. Barnett isn’t sure if he’ll be able to go due to a Grammys rule about only one representative being able to attend the ceremony if a nominated group has more than 20 people. He regrets that he didn’t go when he was first nominated, though it would’ve been expensive and at an uncertain time because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Still, if he can go to the ceremony this year, he definitely will — in fact, his wife has already chosen her dress. He says he plans to wear a black suit.
“If I do get to go, we’re going, and it’s going to be a great time,” he said.
“The Original Influencers: Dizzy, Chano & Chico” is available on Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube Music. For more information about Ben Barnett, visit boneheadjazz.org.
