JAZZ REVIEWS : FIERY D’RIVERA

Everything that Paquito D’Rivera played during his second set at Marineland’s Sky Tower stage Saturday was like a good hot sauce--piquant and fiery. The reedman’s zesty concoctions kicked off a new four-part series of jazz concerts being held at the marine life park Saturday and Sunday afternoons.

Wearing a pale broad-brimmed hat, striped short-sleeve shirt and jeans, the Cuban-expatriate D’Rivera looked like a “tropical” jazzman and his exuberant music sounded that way. A charging Latin-tinged-with-funk beat--provided alternately singly and collectively by the rhythm team of pianist Daniel Freiberg, bassman Sergio Brandao or drummer Ignaccio Berroa--underpinned each of the four tunes in the band’s second set.

“All the Things You Are” began with Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker’s three-note, bop-era introduction and segued directly into a steaming D’Rivera alto sax solo, where his fluent ideas--which often leaped from horn top to horn bottom in a flash--and singing sound stood out. Trumpeter Claudio Roditi’s pleasantly fuzzy tone seemed ideally suited for the brisk, dancing phrases he played.

The bolero (Latin ballad) “Como Fue” began quietly enough, but soon D’Rivera and company had injected the performance with typical zip. The number was climaxed by a funky Freiberg outing, where he dashed out hard-banged chords and glistening repeated phrases to great effect.

Another high point was a snappy samba, where the inventive Roditi soared, offering whizzing, boppish lines.