Jazz : Latin Band Spins Off the Old

Nothing against jam sessions, but it sure is hard to beat the sound of a well-rehearsed big Latin jazz band that’s been together for over a decade.

In a city famous for using studio musicians for one-night stands, the late Mario Bauza’s Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra, playing before a nearly full house Saturday night at Wadsworth Theater, blew the audience away with the tremendous sound of a 17-piece band that pays exquisite attention to the music’s every nuance.

Led by Cuban-born singer-composer-arranger Rudy Calzado, Bauza’s longtime friend, the Grammy-nominated Afro-Cubans played mostly older Cuban dance music that acquired a whole new depth thanks to sophisticated arrangements. This was further evidenced by the band’s capacity for changing grooves in mid-song and leaving the audience to expect the unexpected.

It took a German record label (Messidor Musik) to place Bauza--at the age of 80--in America’s musical consciousness, after years of languishing in the shadow of his famous brother-in-law, Frank Grillo, known as Machito, the percussionist who is considered one of the pioneers of Latin jazz.

That fact is hard to fathom after listening to the beautiful and visionary slow movement of the “Tanga Suite,” written by Bauza in 1943, which featured a lush trombone solo by Gerry Chamberlain.

That aside, however, Calzado and bandleader Victor Paz delivered a much less adventuresome program from what one might expect after listening to the band’s albums. Instead, they stuck to up-tempo fare, from the Cuban classic “El Manicero,” played with an unexpected jazz vibe and whimsically sung by Calzado, to straight-ahead Latin jazz like “A Night in Tunisia” and a mambo-esque version of Irving Berlin’s “Heatwave.”

As a singer, Calzado leaves nothing to be desired, with a strong Cuban sonero voice that takes you back 40 years to New York ballrooms and that can also scat and improvise over the band.

As director, though, his job is more that of a frontman and cheerleader. More importantly, he is keeping Bauza’s legacy alive and well.