Become a member and get exclusive access to articles, live sessions and more!
Start Your Free Trial

This is the 1st of your 3 free articles

Become a member for unlimited website access and more.

FREE TRIAL Available!

Learn More

Already a member? Sign in to continue reading

Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis: Una Noche con Rubén Blades (Blue Engine)

Review of live collaboration between the lauded big band and the equally lauded Panamanian singer

JazzTimes may earn a small commission if you buy something using one of the retail links in our articles. JazzTimes does not accept money for any editorial recommendations. Read more about our policy here. Thanks for supporting JazzTimes.
Cover of Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra album Una Noche con Rubén Blades
Cover of Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra album Una Noche con Rubén Blades

First-time visitors to New York’s Jazz at Lincoln Center are often surprised, when watching the house band perform, that Wynton Marsalis, its undisputed superstar, is seated in the JALC Orchestra’s back row—just another band member. As far as the trumpeter is concerned, this is a group of equals, one composed of many leaders. One of them, bassist Carlos Henriquez, served as music director when the Panamanian vocal giant Rubén Blades teamed up with the orchestra for a series of shows in November 2014. That performance, which includes numbers penned by Blades and tunes from the Great American Songbook, seriously sizzles.

Marsalis, of course, is present—he’s the featured soloist on the first and final songs of the set, “Ban Ban Quere” and “Patria,” the former written by Calixto Varela Gomez and the latter by Blades. Several other members of the JLCO step out front at various times throughout the course of the evening; soprano saxophonist Victor Goines adds a dollop of sensuality to the already luxuriant ballad “Apóyate En Mi Alma” and four of the group’s drums/percussion battery blast off on the Blades medley that closes out the set proper.

But however consistently exciting and flawless the big band is, it’s Blades himself who dominates. His command as a vocal stylist, singing first in English and then in Spanish, is beyond reproach. On the Jimmy McHugh-Dorothy Fields chestnut “I Can’t Give You Anything but Love,” he rides the orchestra’s swing with effortlessness, hears out the solos, then decides to take matters into his own hands, directing the various elements until it’s become one churning rhythm machine. Midway he stops to exclaim, “Yeah! Yeah!” and you know just where he’s coming from.

Preview, buy or download Una Noche con Rubén Blades on Amazon!

Advertisement
Advertisement
Originally Published