Those spicy rhythms

When you say “Latin jazz,” do you accent the first term, the second or neither? Are these elements friendly rivals, clinging lovers or, perhaps at times, spirited sparring partners?

As was demonstrated at the second annual Los Angeles Latin Jazz Festival, they can be all three. On a seasonably chilly Saturday night at the Greek Theatre, the generous 3 1/2 -hour program afforded ample time to reflect on what Dizzy Gillespie, Tito Puente and the Stans (Kenton and Getz), among many others, helped create when they fused hot Afro-Cuban and cool Brazilian rhythms and Caribbean instrumentation with home-grown American jazz.

The pedagogical point wasn’t lost on Jose Rizo, the genial KKJZ-FM (88.1) on-air personality who presided as emcee over the festival while also shepherding his Jazz on the Latin Side All Stars, the large ensemble named for his popular radio show.

More than once, Rizo invited people in the audience, particularly those less familiar with the alchemical attraction between the musical genres, to contemplate “that special place,” as he called it, “where jazz meets Latin.”

But there was no need for prep work, and festivalgoers needed no prompting to partake eagerly of a bill that included legendary players Kenny Burrell, Hubert Laws (both in excellent form) and the effortlessly elegant Cuban saxophonist Paquito D’Rivera, plus Puerto Rican percussionist Giovanni Hidalgo, who sat in for a couple of extraordinary numbers with Charlie Sepulveda and the Turnaround.

For added panache, Cuban American actor Andy Garcia turned up on bongos with master vibraphone player Dave Samuels and the Caribbean Jazz Project.

Generally speaking, the evening started out somewhere around the broad middle of hemispheric jazz-pop with the Turnaround, who hit their stride with a very chevere rendition of Stevie Wonder’s “Don’t You Worry ‘Bout a Thing.”

Sepulveda polished the number with a fine, clean trumpet line and a startlingly slow, feathery descent on the chorus, in tandem with his sax player.

Unquestionably, the highlight of the opening set was the elfin Hidalgo’s appearance. In a white knit cap, he made a gargantuan assault on the congas with virtually every part of his upper appendages: fists, wrists, fingertips, palms, maybe even chin. While intermittently allowing the beat to soften and stutter, Hidalgo never allowed it to halt, repeatedly making it spring from near-death back to life, like a Santeria priest bidding ancestral spirits to leap out of their graves and spark the hearts of the living.

The program then floated off into suave, Caribbean supper-club territory with Samuels et al., including a foray into Brazilian bossa nova with a version of “One for Tom” by Antonio Carlos Jobim (a D’Rivera specialty) that beautifully balanced the tune’s blend of jauntiness and wistfulness.

The band, with a front line that also included piano and steelpan, played a tightly arranged but confidently relaxed set that explored the wide harmonic possibilities of the music.

Just at the point when some concertgoers might have begun yearning for a slightly darker, rummier flavor to close out the night, the Jazz on the Latin Side All Stars took the stage and delivered, showing how compelling this technically expert group can be when its intricate arrangements are matched by the frenetic energy of live performance.

Their tribute to the tropical side of John Coltrane, “Justo’s Trane Ride,” off their CD “The Last Bullfighter,” spotlighted the band’s top-rank tenor sax man, Justo Almario, and “Baila Mi Gente,” from its “Tambolero” release, roused more than one audience member to spring from her seat.

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reed.johnson@latimes.com