Christelle Durandy’s October 17 performance at the Jazzschool in Berkeley centers on women composers whose work helped shape Latin American standards. It will also be her first stage performance since a ruptured aneurysm nearly killed her last year. The 52-year-old Bay Area Latin vocalist collapsed while working as music director on a La Mezcla production in San Francisco, spent almost two months in intensive care and underwent seven surgical procedures.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported that doctors also found a second aneurysm in danger of bursting during her treatment. Durandy, who was born and raised in Brittany to a father who grew up in Guadeloupe and a mother from Réunion, is working on walking asymmetry and balance in rehabilitation. A GoFundMe campaign called Support Christelle Durandy's Aneurysm Recovery, organized by friends after she collapsed during the March 23, 2025 rehearsal, raised $65,825 to help cover medical expenses and post-aneurysm rehabilitation.
What recovery and fundraising figures can tell us
For broader context, Mother Jones reported that a 2022 study found 12 percent of U.S.-based GoFundMe medical campaigns met their goals between 2016 and 2020, while 16 percent received no donations. Those figures describe campaign outcomes; they do not establish patients’ medical costs or access to care, or how Durandy’s campaign funds were handled.
Durandy’s musical background spans gwo'ka, jazz, soul and Latin music. The Chronicle’s reporting describes her childhood performances of gwo'ka, jazz studies at Brittany’s national conservatory, work in Cuba and New York, and move to the Bay Area at the end of 2016. She also opened for James Brown and Bob Marley and sang soul in a Motown-Stax revue.
The Repertoire: Women Composers at Center
Durandy's October 17 performance, titled ¡LAS que escribieron!, is part of the Jazzschool's Latino History Month series ¡Sonidos Latinos!. The concert spotlights overlooked women songwriters and composers behind Latin American standards, including María Teresa Vera, Isolina Carrillo, Marta Valdés, María Grever, Chabuca Granda, Violeta Parra, and Sylvia Rexach, the Chronicle reports. Tickets cost $25, and Durandy worked on the arrangements with Julio de la Cruz for a modern jazz quartet featuring sophisticated reharmonizations, odd meters, and metric modulations.
The composers represented carry historic weight across Latin America. Mexican composer María Grever, whose work appears in the program, was the first female Mexican composer to gain international acclaim and wrote the 1934 classic Cuando vuelva a tu lado, later translated into English as What a Diff'rence a Day Makes, according to The Henry Ford Museum. Cuban composer and pianist Isolina Carrillo wrote the standard bolero Dos Gardenias in 1945, which later reached international fame through recordings by La Sonora Matancera and Ibrahim Ferrer with the Buena Vista Social Club.
Chilean singer-songwriter Violeta Parra composed Gracias a la Vida in 1966 as a foundational work of the Nueva Canción movement.
Collaborations Across the Bay Area Latin Jazz Scene
Durandy's comeback follows years of collaboration with some of the region's most decorated ensembles. She has performed with the 19-piece Pacific Mambo Orchestra, which won the Grammy Award for Best Tropical Latin Album in 2014 for its self-titled debut release, as reported by CBS San Francisco. She has also performed with percussionist and educator John Santos, a seven-time Grammy nominee who was named SFJAZZ Resident Artistic Director for 2013–2014.
Patois Records released the anthology Salsa de la Bahía: Renegade Queens, which features a new piece featuring Durandy. Before her health crisis, she had also served as vocalist and ensemble musician in Ghostly Labor, an evening-length percussive dance theater production created by Vanessa Sanchez and La Mezcla that premiered at Brava Theater in San Francisco in December 2023, combining African-American tap, Mexican zapateado, and Afro-Caribbean-informed movement and rhythms with a seven-piece band, according to Mission Local.
The Jazzschool itself has undergone its own transformation. Founded in 1997 by pianist Susan Muscarella as a community music school in Downtown Berkeley, its degree-granting California Jazz Conservatory program ended in fall 2024 due to declining enrollment, though its non-degree community education program continues with 1,000 students currently enrolled, per Berkeleyside. The venue sits at 2087 Addison Street in the Downtown Berkeley Arts District.
A Future Eddie Palmieri Tribute
Durandy's recovery arrives alongside a bigger booking still to come. Rebeca Mauleón, director of education at SFJAZZ, secured Durandy for an SFJAZZ tribute to the late pianist, composer and bandleader Eddie Palmieri, who died at age 88, scheduled for December 17 at the SFJAZZ Center's Robert N. Miner Auditorium in San Francisco. An SFJAZZ family matinee is also scheduled for April 17, 2027.
Durandy also leads her own Caribbean jazz quintet, Sanktet, named after the French phrase cinq têtes.
The October 17 set will bring Durandy back to a stage she has not led since her hospitalization, with arrangements that recast songs by women composers in a modern jazz quartet. It is one step in a recovery that includes rehabilitation and a return to performing after years of carrying music across Brittany, Cuba, New York and the Bay Area.
