The New York Times-20080129-In a New Home- Reprising the Old Tunes- -Review-
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In a New Home, Reprising the Old Tunes; [Review]
Full Text (447 words)The Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra, an 18-piece band led by the pianist Arturo O'Farrill, left its perch at Jazz at Lincoln Center last year and moved itself a mile and a half north, to Symphony Space. It's starting over, and its programs this year are re-introductions to the things the band did best at its old home.
A whole new subscription audience no doubt needs that reintroduction. But you worry about lost time because the band has such an enormous mission. Its tacit argument seems to be that Latin jazz is not a side road but the main artery: the ultimate fusion of West African rhythm and big-band swing and improvisation, reaching beyond New York jazz and salsa toward music of the Antilles and South America. It's an almost inexhaustible idea, like a dream of a house with endless rooms.
On Friday at Symphony Space the band played a concert called Otra Noche Inolvidable (Another Unforgettable Night), a reprise of a Lincoln Center concert from two years ago, which was recorded and later nominated for a Grammy. In the orchestra's terms, the concert represented its mainstream repertory, a line drive down the middle of its audience's knowledge and taste. And like the first time around, it featured the singer Herman Olivera, the band's most potent weapon.
He doesn't know it, Mr. O'Farrill mock-whispered to the crowd while introducing Mr. Olivera, but he's a jazz musician. Mr. Olivera, light-voiced and loose-limbed, is a great vocal improviser, a sonero who apprenticed with Eddie Palmieri, Manny Oquendo and other New York band leaders. His ad-libbed sections dragged out and fragmented the rhythms; when he was onstage, the show was fail-safe.
From the album the band played a bolero medley, as well as two songs from the singer and bandleader Tito Rodriguez: Don Fulano and Buscando La Melodia. Even the instrumental solos in those songs, like that of the alto saxophonist Bobby Porcelli in Buscando, seemed borne aloft by the force that Mr. Olivera put under the whole enterprise.
There were other moments of strength from several soloists, especially the saxophonist Erica Von Kleist, the trombonist Luis Bonilla and the trumpeter Jim Seeley. But apart from the vocal numbers, the ensemble seemed to lose power, even in songs that it has played many times before, like Papo Vazquez's Iron Jungle, which incorporates Puerto Rican bomba and plena rhythms, and Tom Harrell's Humility. This is a band you don't want to see settling into routine; the concert made you look forward impatiently to whatever door it will open next.
[Illustration]PHOTO: Herman Olivera, left, was the guest vocalist at a concert of the Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra.(PHOTOGRAPH BY ERIN BAIANO FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)