Bay Area musicians to host benefit concert for Richmond drummer who broke his hands

As the scaffolding listed to one side, with Valentino Pellizzer-Salgado clinging to it as it was about to tip over, the Richmond-based musician knew he had to let go.

A drummer, producer, engineer and jack-of-all trades, Pellizzer-Salgado found himself in this precarious position at a Novato church where he’d spent much of the day installing new speakers. He was almost finished when the scaffolding failed and he had to throw himself clear, falling about 12 feet onto the hard floor, landing on his heels, rear end and hands, he said.

The Nov. 13 accident shattered bones in his wrists and arms. He’s still recovering and facing the possible end of his drumming career, a creative calling that has powered a succession of acclaimed Bay Area bands, such as the Latin soul combos O-Maya and AguaLibra and the classical-meets-hip-hop Ensemble Mik Nawooj.    

Pellizzer-Salgado has built and run several recording studios over the years, and since the pandemic he’d been installing sound systems to help make ends meet. He sounds both proud and a little chagrined about his immediate response to the accident.

“I told the guy who was working with me to get me some ibuprofen and I’ll talk you through this to finish wiring the speakers,” he recalled. “I called an electrician friend to come out, and we got the job done. Then I went to the ER.”

His commitment to the project at hand offers a glimpse into the spirit of an artist who’s often directed his resourcefulness to cultivate creative communities. So it’s no surprise that more than a dozen of the Bay Area’s most respected musicians are gathering Sunday night at La Peña Cultural Center for “Tunes for Tino,” a fundraiser to help cover his medical and living expenses. 

Organized by Jim Hogan, a founding member of Gamelan Sekar Jaya who spent more than four decades as executive director of the California Youth Symphony, the talent-packed program includes soul-steeped vocalists Destani Wolf, Tiffany Austin, Luqman Frank and Valerie Troutt, tenor saxophonist Howard Wiley, and drummer Josh Jones. Performing regularly as the Hogan Brothers, Jim Hogan’s sons — pianist/keyboardist Colin Hogan, bassist Steve Hogan and drummer Julian Hogan — make up the house band, while Rico Pabon will serve as MC.

“Tino is so beloved in the community that we’re scrambling to accommodate all of the artists who would love to participate, but we’ve got the core group and hope there’ll be opportunities for more folks to sit in as the evening progresses,” said Jim Hogan, noting that Julian and Colin met Pellizzer-Salgado at Berkeley High in the late 1990s “and he’s been a member of our extended family since then.”

Valerie Troutt also graduated from Berkeley High, but she met Pellizzer-Salgado when they were studying jazz at the New School in New York City. She remembers spotting his colorful dashikis and 1,000-watt smile and knowing that he was a fellow Californian before they even spoke.

“He had this beautiful energy and that brilliant smile,” she said, noting that they had several friends in common, such as pianist/vocalist Dana Salzman and drummer Jaz Sawyer. “But we really connected when I came back to the Bay Area. He recorded my first project here at his studio off of San Pablo Avenue, playing drums and producing. He brought the necessary energy to bring the music to life.”

Like Pellizzer-Salgado, Troutt has become a community building force in the Bay Area as an educator and cultural activist, producing a series of conclaves known as “Because of Black Music IAm” (Disclosure: The author of this article participated in a panel discussion at the inaugural 2023 festival.). After collaborating in the studio she’s watched and participated in an array of his initiatives, including a popular concert series at the Ferry Building in San Francisco.

“He can do most anything or figure out how to do it,” she said. “From cooking and building a studio from scratch to figuring out how to build or use software and equipment. His whole thing is to heal the people, and to help artists to thrive and be able to afford to live here. He’s a visionary who can create and design experiences and support his friends like no other.”

Pellizzer-Salgado was born into a life of music

In many ways holding “Tunes for Tino” at La Pena is deeply fitting. It’s where Pellizzer-Salgado’s mother, who hails from Bogota, Colombia, met his father, who came to Berkeley from northern Italy. They moved around for several years and eventually separated, and he grew up with his mother in Berkeley’s Southside neighborhood. Early exposure to music in Berkeley public schools via Dick Whittington and Bob Chacona planted seeds that bloomed at Malcolm X Elementary School in the Gilbert and Sullivan troupe founded and run by Catherine Lynch and Arden Clute.

“The Gilbert and Sullivan operettas got me on stage, learning to rehearse in a group,” Pellizzer-Salgado said. “We’d travel out of state to do these shows, like cultural exchanges with Native American schools on reservations. It was really formative.”

His ongoing affair with the drums was sparked around the same time when a friend of his mom married Kuumba Rhymer, who’d played with the great Jamaican reggae band Mighty Diamonds. Rhymer started rehearsing a new combo at his house and the experience of watching the band up close and hearing the tuning of the drum set sparked an epiphany.

“I was in love with hip hop and break dancing at that time, and I connected Kuumba’s tight, dry punchy tone with hip-hop and funk,” he said. “With his first strike on the snare drum I felt a connection with my soul deeper than the other instruments.”

Too intimidated at first to audition for the Berkeley High Jazz Band, Pellizzer-Salgado eventually joined the program at a time when future luminaries like keyboardist Mike Aaberg, saxophonist Dayna Stephens, and trumpeters Jonathan Finlayson and Ambrose Akinmusire were in the band. At the same time he was immersing himself in jazz, he was learning his way around the recording studio, making beats and rhythm tracks.

After a year studying at the New School, averse to taking on six figures of student debt, he returned to Berkeley and took courses at the Peralta community colleges, “all sorts of classes, photography, painting, car repair, computers,” he said.

He first made a musical mark with O-Maya, a big Latin funk hip-hop band that featured an impressive array of young musicians. With vocalist Destani Wolf managing the group it quickly gained traction, regularly selling out nights at the Elbo Room, playing major stages like Reggae On the River, and winning top honors as SF Weekly’s Best Latin Alternative Band in the 2003 Best of the Bay poll. When O-Maya broke up and several members continued to pursue that Latin soul sound with AguaLibre, Wolf and Pellizzer-Salgado continued to work together.

“You can always feel his passion and how much the music moves him,” said Wolf, who performs most Monday afternoons at Freight & Salvage with vocal legend and NEA Jazz Master Bobby McFerrin’s a cappella quintet Motion.

“I think he’s someone who’s always trying to bring folks together, and we all need that. A lot of people talk about things, but he uses his passion and excitement to motivate creativity. That’s rare. A lot of people would love to do that but they don’t have time or don’t make the time for co-creation in a way that shares love and light.”

Like so many people, Pellizzer-Salgado was shaken by the first years of the pandemic. It wasn’t just losing all his work. He underwent an identity crisis, “a metamorphosis psychologically,” he said. “I realized for the first time that music isn’t going to save me. I’d gotten into the mindset that you’ve got to always be hustling. But where’s the joy in this?”

Pellizzer-Salgado moved to Richmond in 2012 and eventually bought a house in the Clinton neighborhood near El Cerrito with his wife Lauren Van Ham, an ordained minister and climate action coordinator for the international grassroots interfaith network United Religions Initiative. They’ve become champions of the city, which they see as coursing with creative energy that fuels their various passions.

 “I love Richmond,”  Pellizzer-Salgado said. “It reminds me of Berkeley when I was growing up, with families and artists and all kinds of folks.” 

To combat the unforgiving economic environment for artists, Pellizzer-Salgado threw himself into other pursuits in recent years. He built cannabis grow rooms and recording studios, produced concert series, and composed and designed sound for choreographer Nicole Klaymoon’s Embodiment Project. A pent-up wave of demand for wedding and birthday celebrations led to a burst of band gigs in 2022, and he joined the IATSE Local 16, the union for San Francisco stage hands.

In 2023 he booked dozens of local artists for a mid-week concert series at the Ferry Building, but most of the music contract work evaporated, and he was throwing himself into sound system installation, the job that led to the scaffolding plunge in Novato. Facing the prospect of, at best, a prolonged recovery, he asked himself some serious questions. Music had the answers.

“That first week with casts up to my elbows, I was asking, ‘Who am I? What am I supposed to do?’ I thought, put your ass in a booth and sing in a microphone. If I can’t play drums, I’m going to sing and play music. So I’ve evolved into being a singer and songwriter. From beatboxing and using my mouth I have a lot of breath control. I’ve got hundreds of songs I’ve never released.”

After undergoing what likely will be the first in a series of surgeries, his hands will largely be out of commission until the summer. A lifetime of supporting friends and nurturing relationships have taken on a whole new dimension after the accident.  

“It’s been brutal and the most beautiful thing, horrifying and awe-inspiring,” Pellizzer-Salgado said. “All these people in my community showing up. My first post on Instagram asked people to pray for me. It’s so heartwarming to see how many people reached out. It’s the seeds you sow, the beautiful thing about our Bay Area music scene, being so tight knit.”

With a little luck and help from his friends Pellizzer-Salgado will be back weaving more musical threads before too long.