Puente, Palmieri, Sanchez Electrify Latin Jazz Festival

Maybe it was the balmy weather or the fact that the second day of Latin Jazz Festival ’99 didn’t have to compete, as the opening night did, with the De La Hoya-Trinidad boxing match. Whatever the cause, Sunday afternoon at the California Plaza Watercourt drew a capacity crowd for what was surely one of the finest performances of Latin jazz-oriented music in a very long time.

But maybe the real reason for the enthusiastic turnout was simply the presence of Tito Puente, Eddie Palmieri and David Sanchez. It would be hard to ask for a better lineup.

Sanchez, who opened the bill with his quintet, is, at 31, an artist on the verge of making a major breakout. The Puerto Rico-born saxophonist, who plays both tenor and soprano, has been showing signs of dramatic creative growth for the past two or three years, and his performance at the Watercourt was the work of an artist who has finally come into his own.

Working with an extraordinarily well-integrated band, Sanchez generated a set that was filled with the joy and wonder of improvisation. More than that, it offered a fascinating glimpse into a jazz future in which the music’s performers find meaningful ways to meld rhythms, melodies and conceptual ideas from other cultures into the mainstream of jazz. Brilliantly supported by the galvanized playing of pianist Edsel Gomez, bassist Hans Glawischnig, percussionist Pernell Saturnino and drummer Antonio Sanchez, Sanchez played over a bubbling caldron of rhythm that was an amazing mixture of danceable rhythms, rich emotional dynamics and metric complexity. A little something for everybody.

Puente always has something for everybody, of course, and this performance was no exception. His set was a familiar blend of standards--from “On Broadway” to his own “Oye Como Va”--and irresistible dance tunes. Puente worked the crowd in his charming, let’s-all-have-fun manner and quickly had the aisles filled with dancers. But, as he has sneakily done for 20 years, he also seasoned virtually every tune with riff-driven arrangements from his seven-piece horn section and allowed plenty of openings for jazz soloing.

Palmieri, who--like Puente--was honored with a trophy as part of his induction into the Latin Jazz Hall of Fame, added even more jazz elements to his stirring set. Known, with considerable justification, as the most avant-garde of the established Latin jazz leaders, he lived up to his reputation, juxtaposing his intense synthesizer sounds against powerful horn section statements. But he never lost sight of the importance of the beat, supporting even the most dissonant passages with the flowing power of Latin rhythms.

As Palmieri’s set roared to a climactic ending, a comment that he made to this writer three years ago kept coming to mind. “Latin jazz,” Palmieri said, “is the music that I predict will overwhelm the 21st century.” Obviously, he was a far more accurate visionary than anyone could have imagined.