Jane Bunnett's Alma De Santiago

Making music with the celebrated artists she's collaborated with has taken Jane Bunnett to "some incredible places".

"And I don't mean just physically," the flautist and saxophonist will tell you. "I've always been drawn to music that's enriched my life, but I never realized how deep the connection with Cuban music would go. I'm tied to Cuba."

Bunnett's relationship with that island nation began innocently enough. Fifteen years back, she and trumpeter husband Larry Cramer took refuge from a typically nasty Canadian winter there and were bitten hard by the music bug. Since then, they've released several critically acclaimed albums which mine the mind-boggling diversity that is Cuban music. 1996's Jane Bunnett and the Cuban Piano Masters was a drummerless record that saw Bunnett and company elegantly weaving together European classical, jazz and Cuban classical forms. And '97s star-studded Chamalongo was a percussive feast that embraced Cuban folkloric music, Santeria chants, and jazz improvisation. Bunnett calls Chamalongo the most passionate record of her career and the critics agreed, heaping lavish praise upon it.

Not content to get by on the props, Bunnett conceptualized a record that sees her band bringing something new to the Latin Jazz genre. In addition to Bunnett and Cramer, the lineup includes bassist Roberto Occhipinti, pianist Hilario Duran, singer Ernesto "El Gato" Gatell, drummer Dafnis Prieto, legendary bata master Pancho Quinto and 13-year-old percussion prodigy Michael "Lucumi" Herrera. New York-based singer Dean Bowman and kalimba player and singer Njacko Backo are new to the fold.

Fascinated by the sweet, evocative sound of the kalimba and the thunder of the bata drums, Bunnett decided to combine the two. This unique fusion is most explicit on "3 Voices One Spirit" and "Francisco's Dream", both of which feature Cameroon native Backo.

"I wrote 3 Voices the day before the session," the Juno Award winning horn player says. "I wanted a piece that would combine those three guys (Gatell, Bowman, and Backo), and I sat down at the piano and came up with a simple chord progression that I felt they could sing over."

Ritmo+Soul is very much an album of firsts. Apart from employing a drum kit for the first time, Cramer and Bunnett penned most of the compositions on Ritmo+Soul. This is a departure for the duo that blended jazz improvisation with traditional Afro-Cuban rhythms in the past.

"Because it's original music, it allows those musicians to bring their musical history to the table," Bunnett says. "Of course, we're working with some traditional rhythms but, it's allowing them artistic freedom."

Gospel music joins hands with Afro-Cuban rhythms on Ritmo+Soul and "The River/El Rio" offers proof that the two can swing sweetly.

"I like gospel music and having spent a lot of time in Cuba listening to religious music, I noticed the similarities were really strong and the effect they had on people was the same," Bunnett explains. "That's why I knew they'd cook up so naturally."

Trained as a classic pianist and clarinetist, Bunnett hopped genres in '78 after hearing Charles Mingus, John Coltrane, Don Pullen and other artists "who were very much in the jazz tradition but were open to different sound possibilities." Studying under saxophonist Steve Lacy and pianist Barry Harris further inspired Bunnett to investigate uncharted musical territory.

The spiritual nature of Afro-Cuban folkloric music cast a spell on Bunnett -- she says its openness lends itself to improvisation -- and for the last decade she's been collaborating with some of Cuba's most esteemed musicians to create something new. In 1992, well before the current craze over Cuban music, Bunnett recorded Spirits Of Havana, an album that garnered her a Juno Award for Best World Beat Recording. Since then, she and Cramer have brought more than 40 Cuban musicians to tour with them in Canada and the United States, and they've established the Spirits of Music project that raises money to repair broken instruments in Cuba's conservatories.

Bunnett's as excited about Ritmo+Soul as she is about an NFB documentary film on Cuban music she and Cramer will present this fall and winter at various film festivals around the world.

"We've been researching music on the island for several years, but we'd never done a road trip where we investigated the musics of the whole country," she says. "We went from Havana to Santiago and saw and heard so many different groups. So, we did the research trip and returned and did the thing for real. We did concerts, we recorded with different groups -- these included son montuno groups, a 38-piece conga band, a 10-piece a capella choir from Camaguey Province that sings in Creole -- this is all on film. Bunnett plans to release a CD to go along with the film.

Until then, both Bunnett's fans and newcomers to her innovative musical melting pot will be captivated by the jazz sounds of Ritmo+Soul, showing Bunnett the artist taking her music in fresh directions.