High Voltage Latin Jazz with Dayramir Gonzalez & Cuba enTRANCe at Lincoln Center

It would probably be overhype to call pianist Dayramir Gonzalez the missing link between Eddie Palmieri and McCoy Tyner. But at his thundering, intense show last week Lincoln Center, Gonzalez and his booming ensemble Cuba enTRANCe strongly brought to mind both of those two icons. With a crushing lefthand attack, stampeding the entire length of the keys, Gonzalez’s intensity never relented. Nobody knows better than he does that the piano is a percussion instrument.

If that wasn’t enough, Gonzalez made sure he had plenty more torrential beats on hand, with both drums and congas in the band: each player got plenty of time in the spotlight and used it explosively. Contrastingly, Gonzalez’s bassist – playing a five-string model with an extra B on the low end – held the center, tersely and calmly, with his judicious, resonant slides and the occasional chord to drive a big crash home.

The quartet opened with a shapeshifting, majestic jazz waltz, introducing the calm/frenetic bass/piano dynamic that would last the duration of the night. The second number, Moving Foward, was a bristling, modally-charged epic, the thunder punctuated by Gonzalez’s glistening cascades and a couple of more moody, suspenseful interludes where the rhythm dropped back.

He explained that as a kid, he’d followed his mom’s advice that “Una sonrisa abre puertas,” building on that idea with Smiling, a more pointillistic, leaping number. He brought it down afterward with a solo ballad from his debut album, Grand Concourse, which was party salsa jazz and part late Beatles. The rest of the set was just as dynamic: loopy, catchy riffage over polyrhythms; more glistening, darkly vamping tableaux that were part salsa and part Chopin; sad boleroish balladry and pouncing, carnaval-esque party themes. Gonzalez spoke eloquently to the similarities between the refugee crisis in Europe and the one further south on this continent; he even sang a little. The crowd clapped along, hitting a salsa groove without any prompting. Right now, Gonzalez seems to be better known in Europe than he is here, and that’s a crime. His next gig is on Dec 4 at 8 PM at Vibrato Grill Jazz, 2930 N Beverly Glen Cir in Los Angeles; cover is $30.

The series of free concerts at the Lincoln Center atrium space on Broadway just north of 62nd St. continues tonight, Dec 2, with an earlier, 7 PM show featuring Strings & Skins, who combine Colombian and Haitian dance grooves. There are also many other performances in the neighborhood until 9; if you can handle the cold, follow the sound.

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Dafnis Prieto Brings His Lush, Gorgeous Latin Big Band Sounds to the Jazz Standard Next Month

Over the course of his career, drummer Dafnis Prieto has immersed himself in an enormous number of influences. So it’s no surprise that the new album by his explosive Big Band, Back to the Sunset – streaming at Spotify – is a salute to every latin jazz artist he’s drawn inspiration from, sometimes three composers in a single song! That mammoth ambition pays mighty dividends throughout the album’s nine epic tracks. Prieto’s compositions are very democratic, with tons of animated call-and-response and counterpoint, and everybody in the band gets time in the spotlight. This seventeen-piece crew are playing a short stand at the Jazz Standard June 6-10, with sets at 7:30 and 9:30 PM; cover is $30.

Trumpeter Brian Lynch takes centerstage on and off, with and without a mute, in the blazing opening number, Una Vez Más. Pianist Manuel Valera tumbles and then delivers a contrastingly elegant solo; the rest of the trumpet line (Mike Rodríguez, Nathan Eklund, Alex Sipiagin and Josh Deutsch) build a conflagration over a slinky Afro-Cuban groove; the band storm up to a catchy four-chord riff and a blast of a coda. Prieto dedicates all this to Lynch, along with Tito Puente and Eddie Palmieri.

Is The Sooner the Better a mashup of bossa nova and Fort Apache flavor, since it’s a shout-out to Jerry Gonzalez and Egberto GIsmonti? With its rising exchanges throughout the band and relentlessly suspenseful pulse, it’s closer to the Brazilian composer’s most broodingly cinematic work. Baritone saxophonist Chris Cheek gets a tantalizingly brief, gruff solo, tenor saxophonist Peter Apfelbaum keeps it dark but gets more expansive, then piano and brass carry it away,

Cheek takes a wryly jovial solo to open Out of the Bone, whidh begins as a stunning, slashing mashup of Ethiopiques and Afro-Cuban styles. Massed brass carries the tune into more symphonic territory, then a droll, chattering interlude, and finally a round of trombones: Tim Albright, Alan Ferber, Jacob Garchik and Jeff Nelson.

Interestingly, the album’s gorgeously lingering, lavish title track is dedicated to Andrew Hill and Henry Threadgill, who takes a wryly spacious, peek-a-boo cameo on alto sax. The album’s longest number, Danzonish Potpourri, shifts suddenly from bluesy gravitas, to lush sweep, hushed piano-based glimmer and then a towering bolero spiced with shivery horn accents. How do they end this beast of a tune? With a coy Apfelbaum melodica solo.

Guest altoist Steve Coleman bubbles brightly, then hands off to trumpeter Nathan Eklund in Song for Chico, a cheery Veracruz-flavored number, much of which sounds like a long, joyous outro. Individual voices leap out from every corner of the sonic picture in the triumphantly shuffling Prelude Para Rosa, which like so many other tracks here morphs unexpectedly, in this case to a moody cha-cha with a spiraling Román Filiú alto sax solo.

The no-nonsense, bustling Two For One has similarly vast scattershot voicings, a smoky Apfelbaum solo followed by Valera’s scrambling attack and then a wry wind-down from Prieto and multi-percussionist Roberto Quintero. The album’s final number is the aptly titled The Triumphant Journey, dedicated to Dizzy Gillespie and Chano Pozo, with fiery cascades of Ethiopian riffage and a sudden shift to trumpet-fueled clave.

What a blast this album must have been to make, for a lineup that also includes trumpeters Mike Rodríguez, Alex Sipiagin and Josh Deutsch; alto saxophonist Michael Thomas and bassist Ricky Rodríguez.

Stephanie Chou’s Chinese Jazz Shifts the Paradigm at Lincoln Center

Lincoln Center booked Stephanie Chou and her quartet to celebrate International Women’s Day. They couldn’t have made a more imaginative choice. Chou is a strong singer with an unadorned mezzo-soprano, a strong saxophonist and a brilliantly individualistic composer who’s shifting the paradigm, blending Chinese themes from over the centuries with jazz, classical and more than a little rock in places. Her show last night drew heavily from her latest, innovative album, Asymptote. Her music is relevant, and lyrical, and amazingly eclectic, typical of the programming here lately.

The concert began with Isamu McGregor’s pointillistic, twinkling upper-register piano, joined by Andy Lin’s stark erhu fiddle. Then in a split second he picked up his viola and plucked out a spiky pizzicato riff before returning to the erhu as In the Moon You’ll See My Heart, a new version of the famous 1970s Teresa Teng Chinese pop hit, picked up steam.

Chou picked up her alto sax for General’s Command, reinventing an old Fujianese zither song as hard-hitting, kinetic postbop with more than a hint of gospel, Lin’s violin adding shivery ambience behind Chou’s calm, resolute melody.

“We’re gonna switch gears a little bit,” the college math major and bandleader explained, introducing the lustrous title cut from the new album. “The more you look the less you really see,” she sang: the enveloping, enigmatic sweep of the sax, viola, piano and drummer Vinnie Sperrazza’s muted mallets on the toms dovetailed with the philosophical paradox it alludes to, two lines converging infinitely but never reaching the same point.

Quiet Night Thought – a tropically-tinged setting of a Li Bai poem – followed a similarly lush, distantly brooding nocturnal tangent, Chou singing in Chinese. Then they switched gears again: Lin’ s solo version of an old folk song about birds flutttered, and chirped ,and soared, but with a fluidity that would make any feathered friend jealous.

Chou illustrated Odysseus’ arduous journey home to his true love with Penelope, a haunting, crescendoing backbeat rock ballad fueled by Lin’s aching viola and a spiraling, smoky sax solo. It would have been a huge radio hit for an artsy band like the Alan Parsons Project thirty years ago.

Chou returned to Chinese with her vocals in Making Tofu – inspired by a funny proverb about an only slightly less arduous process – a moody jazz waltz with a gorgeous, sternly crescendoing meteor shower of a piano solo and ominously modal sax work. Who knew so much energy was required to make those innocuous little cubes!

She led the crowd in a Chinese tongue-twister – the gist of it was, “If you eat grapes you spit out the peel, if you don’t eat grapes then you don’t” – then scatted it as Sperrazza rattled his toms and woodblock. She got serious again with the somberly verdant, astringently crescendoing tonalities of In the Forest, inspired by Johann Stolting, a 19th scientist turned hermit and something of a tragic character in her Irvington, New York hometown

Chou’s latest project explores the struggles of the women forced into prostitution by the Japanese in World War II. The world premiere of Manchurian Girl, a reworking of a 1938 Chinese pop song, had a sardonic martial beat: the longing and disillusion in Chou’s voice was visceral and transcended any linguistic limitations. She followed with a dramatic ballad, McGregor’s lingering glitter contrasting with Lin’s insistent attack and closed with a brief tone poem of sorts, part Debussy and part stately Chinese folk.

The next jazz show at Lincoln Center the atrium space on Broadway just north of 62nd St. is an especially amazing one, with ageless latin jazz piano icon Eddie Palmieri and his band on March 16 at 7:30 PM The show is free so get there early or else.

A Blue Note Stand and a Tour From Perennially Fiery Latin Jazz Icon Eddie Palmieri

At this point in his career, latin jazz pianist Eddie Palmieri has nothing left to prove. Is he a NEA Jazz Master yet? If not, let’s get those wheels in motion before Trump and his minions get rid of the NEA altogether. In the meantime, Palmieri has just released a new album, Sabiduria (“wisdom” in Spanish), his first since 2006, streaming at Bandcamp. He’s celebrating that, and his eightieth birthday, with a week at the Blue Note leading a septet starting tonight, Oct 10 through the 15th, with sets at 8 and 10:30 PM. You can get in for thirty bucks – and if you’re not in New York, you can catch him on US tour right afterward if you’re in the right place.

The core of the band on the new album is Joe Locke on vibes, Luques Curtis on bass, Anthony Carrillo on bongos and cowbell, Little Johnny Rivero on congas and Luisito Quintero on timbales, with a long list of special guests – as usual, everybody wants to play with the guy.

It opens with the aptly titled Cuerdas Y Tumbao, a mighty largescale take on a classic, whirlingly celebratory charanga sound. After the string section develops some pretty otherworldly textures, there’s an Alfredo de la Fe violin solo and then a chuggingly energetic one that Palmieri builds to a pretty far-out interlude himself, grinningly half-masked behind the orchestra.

Palmieri famously wanted to be a percussionist but switched to the piano because the competition wasn’t so intense, and the rest is history. That backstory vividly informs Wise Bata Blues, with its punchy, tumbling rhythmic riffage and a similarly kinetic, dancing exchange of solos from trumpet and alto sax, the bandleader choosing his spots with a tongue-in-cheek suspense and a lefthand that hasn’t lost any power over the decades.

Marcus Miller’s snappy bass kicks off the album’s title track, a bizarrely catchy retro 70s mashup of latin soul and psychedelic rock, fueled by Ronnie Cuber’s deliciously acidic baritone sax and David Spinozza’s sunbaked guitar riffage over Palmieri’s dancing incisions. Then the band flips the script with the serpentine guaguanco groove of La Cancha, Locke’s wryly chosen spots contrasting with de la Fe’s stark, insistent solo as the charanga blaze caches fire.

Donald Harrison’s modal sax spirals uneasily in Augustine Parish, a bracingly salsafied blues, up to a hypnotic streetcorner interlude from the percussion crew. Then Palmieri goes solo with Life, a pensively energetic, neoromantically-tinged prelude. The group follows that with the slinky, noir-tinged Samba Do Suenho, Locke’s lingering lines contrasting with Palmieri’s gritty drive – it might be the album’s best track.

Spinal Volt rises from a balmy intro to a blaze of brass and and an energetic exchange of horn solos throughout the band. The Uprising switches back and forth between a casual vocal-and-percussion descarga and a mighty anthem that brings to mind McCoy Tyner’s 70s catalog, with dueling saxes to wind it up.

The steady, Monk-like Coast to Coast slowly brings the sun from behind the clouds, Palmieri and Harrison leading the charge down and then back from a trippy tropical bass-and-percussion break. Driven by Curtis and the bandleader’s relentless attack, the mighty blues shuffle Locked In is the album’s  hardest-hitting number. It winds up with the epic Jibarita Y Su Son, shifting from a  thicket of percussion to a classic salsa dura groove lit up with a fast-forward history of Afro-Cuban beats from the percussion. It’s inspiring to say the least to see a guy Palmieri’s age putting on as wild a party as this one with a group which also includes drummers Bernard “Pretty” Purdie and Obed Calvaire, percussionists Xavier Rivera, Iwao Sado and Camilo Molina, saxophonists Louis Fouché and Jeremy Powell, and trumpeters John Walsh and Jonathan Powell.

Agile, Slinky Latin Jazz Cross-Pollination from Natalie Fernandez

Singer Natalie Fernandez has a genre-smashing new album out, Nuestro Tango, a collaboration with a shapeshifting band whose core is pianist Zaccai Curtis’ Insight. Curtis, a member of both Donald Harrison and Cindy Blackmon’s bands, knows a thing or two about cross-pollination. Likewise, his brother, bassist Luques Curtis, of Eddie Palmieri’s band, whose work obviously inspires this project. Fernandez, daughter of well-known tango singer Stella Milano, does a lot with a small voice, singing fluently in both Spanish and English, more animatedly in Spanish which probably makes sense since the Spanish-language numbers are livelier. Essentially, as Palmieri does so often, these tracks make Afro-Cuban jazz out of themes from further south of the border, in this case from Argentina and Uruguay. The rest of the inspired ensemble includes drummer Richie Barshay, Reinaldo de Jesus on percussion, Daniel Antonetti on timbales, Julie Acosta on trumpet, Tukunori Kajiwara on trombone, and Zach Lucas on tenor sax plus a multitude of special guests.

They open with Azabache, the first of the candombes, which gets a swinging, fat groove, a lithe Zaccai Curtis intro, a gem of a piano solo that’s far too short, a balmy horn chart…then they make a guaguanco out of it. Right there you have the band’s m.o. El Dia Que Me Quieras looks back to the famous Eddie Palmieri version but with more of a nuevo tango feel and coy, terse vocals from Fernandez. Like the first track, they swing it out with a cha-cha groove.

Adios Nonino probably isn’t the first song you might think of swinging, but Fernandez does it tenderly over an understatedly slinky beat lit up by Richard Scofano’s bandoneon. They follow it with Afrotangojazz, a vamping feature for percussion and bandoneon. Malena builds to an emotionally-charged, suspenseful crescendo – and then the percussion kicks in, and suddenly it’s a summery candombe-salsa romp. My True Love, a salsa-tinged jazz ballad co-written by the pianist and singer, gets an incisive, wood-toned bass solo and a hard-hitting break for drums and percussion.

Since this is a Curtis Brothers project (the two earned the top spot on the Best Albums of 2011 list here for their album Completion of Proof) it’s no surprise that there’s socially aware content, most vividly expressed in the elegant jazz waltz Free Me, with its moody bass solo and a thoughtful lyrical interlude delivered by hip-hop artist Giovanni Almonte Alberto Mastra’s El Viaje del Negro gets rapidfire bursts of lyrics, a brisk, poinpoint beat and a full-bore brass section. By contrast, Juan Carlos Cobian’s Nostalgias opens with eerily glimmering piano and a brooding trumpet line setting the stage for Fernandez’ wounded, angst-ridden vocals, intertwined with the bandoneon and a darkly gleaming horn chart. It’s the best and most epic song on the album. Fernandez winds it up with a torchy yet nuanced voice-and-piano version of Eladia Blazquez’s Un Semajente  It’s out now on Truth Revolution Records.

Eddie Palmieri Sets SoHo on Fire

In this era’s maze of weird tempos and microtones, sometimes some of us forget that jazz was the world’s default pop and dance music not for years but for decades. The crowd that packed SOB’s Friday night to see Eddie Palmieri hadn’t forgotten, though. It was as if it was 1965 all over again, in the best possible way. El gente were an eclectic mix of dancers, but just as many of them had come out for a concert experience, to listen and be blown away by the intensity of the music. Even the pianist at least partially responsible for the invention of salsa jazz was impressed by his 14-piece orchestra’s raw, feral power. There was a point where after Palmieri had wrung all the apprehension he could find out of a gleefully cautionary, Monkish riff, trombonist Chris Washburne grabbed a mean handful of low chromatics, ran with them and headed straight to the rafters, the band close behind. Would they ever back away and let it breathe for a minute? No way, Jose! The band’s stampeding ferocity could not be stopped, and at age 75, Palmieri is every bit as vital as he’s ever been, maybe better than ever.

He looked out at the crowd, remarked that the ambience was the same as it had been way back in day at the Palladium, then dedicated an expansively crescendoing version of Azucar Para Ti to Barry Rogers, the trombonist on that landmark album. The band had begun on an improvisationally-charged note – probably a good idea to tweak individual sound levels right off the bat considering how loud it was in the club, with the occasional howl of feedback bleeding from the PA early on – and as the heat rose, eventually took a turn into more hypnotic, two-chord-vamp Afro-Cuban grooves for the sake of the dancers. Crooner Herman Olivera held suave and resolute while the percussionists went deeper into a thicket of tropical polyrhythms punctuated by the incisions and roars of the horns, ablaze with minor-key fury. Palmieri is a generous leader, to a fault, playing to the strengths of the band and doling out solos throughout the orchestra. One particular star was the absolutely brilliant tres player Nelson Gonzalez, who was running his guitar through a watery, flanged effect that gave him almost as much volume as the trombones, making his way matter-of-factly through several slinky, unstoppably crescendoing solos, moving from fluid, sinuous melody lines to frenetic chord-chopping way up the fretboard. It looked as if he was about to break a string at any second, but he never did.

When Palmieri did take a solo, he was probably the most adventurous of everyone, slowly uncoiling from swinging broken chords, to insistent pedal motifs, to outright menace as he fired off several series of resonant atonal clusters anchored by his powerful low lefthand attack. Avant garde as it may have been, it made sense: this is a guy who’s been pushing the envelope all his life. And that was just the first set. Palmieri – who’s just been made a NEA Jazz Master – is off on world tour, with a return engagement at the New York Salsa Congress on September 2 at the Hilton at 6th Ave. and 53rd St. You have to wonder if the rest of the world is anywhere near ready for the kind of energy that the crowd here seemed to take for granted.

Newly Minted NEA Jazz Master Eddie Palmieri at SOB’s This Friday

Eddie Palmieri is one of those artists that you assume has won every accolade. On one hand, the news that the salsa jazz piano icon been named a NEA Jazz Master isn’t going to surprise anybody, unless you thought that he would have received the honor years if not decades ago. So now that he’s got one to go with all his Grammies (nine at last count), you don’t have to wait for a fancy convertible to drive down from Spanish Harlem blasting one of his songs (true story, something that probably happens a lot in Manhattan): Palmieri and band are at SOB’s this Friday, August 3 to celebrate, with two sets at 9 and 11. After that, the onetime teenage timbalero who switched to piano and actually looked back on that choice – “I’m a frustrated percussionist,” he admits – is off to the Hollywood Bowl and then the Monterey Jazz Festival. If you can’t make the concert, you can still hear him on Leonard Lopate’s show on WNYC at 40 minutes past noon this Friday.