The Gabriel Alegria Afro-Peruvian Sextet, 10

What exactly is Afro-Peruvian music? One excellent answer comes from The Gabriel Alegria Afro-Peruvian Sextet and their 5th album celebrating ten years of music making, 10 (Zoho 201509). It is trumpet-leader Gabriel Alegria and a worthy band of trumpet, saxes, percussion, guitar, double bass, drums and vocals. They are joined by an illustrious gathering of guests that includes Ron Carter, Essiat Essiat, Arturo O'Farrill, Badal Roy and some prominent Peruvian musicians in a program of very Afro-grooving music.

The band makes all kinds of music their own with special arrangements. There are the traditional and Peruvian standards alongside anything from "Caravan," "My Favorite Things," "Birdland" "Lonely Woman" and even "The Star Spangled Banner" and the Peruvian National Anthem. It is the making-over of it all into Afro-Peruvian jazz that brings us into a different sunlight.

Lots of Afro-Peruvian percussion, trumpet and sax ensemble and solo spots, and tradition-inflected vocals movingly carry the day. The objective was to bridge the geographical and musical space between Peru and USA both in the repertoire and its treatment.

The music and the group thrive by the artistry of all concerned and the special arrangements the band realizes with fire and groove.

Very recommended for those who would like to dig into some unique and very fine Latin Jazz in a contemporary mode.

Samuel Torres Group, Forced Displacement

Samuel Torres is a very talented conga master. He heads the Samuel Torres Group in a vibrant recent album of Latin jazz, Forced Displacement (Zoho 201507). It is an eight-member ensemble with an excellent trumpet-sax-trombone horn section, piano, bass, drums, and percussionist Jonathan Gomez along with of course Samuel presiding from the congas.

Ten tightly together Torres compositions comprise the program, which are substantial in themselves and serve to showcase Torres's multi-conga melodic-percussive mastery while also getting some wonderful Latin grooves going and setting the stage for some very good soloing from the band.

Torres's playing is not to me missed. It is exhilaratingly advanced and innovative. He is a melodic force in the compositional framework, with his multi-congas tuned to scales, and can flat out groove, too. And the band is very hip, very fresh, tight, and musically sound in the best ways.

Anyone who wants to be bowled over by a top-notch congalero will find this one unbeatable. But then it is some advanced and forward moving Latin jazz, too, with very involved arrangements and a wide spectrum of musical ideas and grooves.

Forced Displacement reaches for the sky and grabs it. Listen to this one, definitely!

Bill O'Connell, The Latin Jazz All-Stars

Better late than never. I was happily pummeled with music over the regular season and since there is only one of me I could not get to all of the good ones fast enough. So I am catching up today with one I wanted to cover earlier, pianist Bill O'Connell and The Latin Jazz All-Stars (Savant 2129).

It achieves a rather big sound with a sextet, thanks in part to the arrangements but also to the clout of the individual players. Connell does those arrangements and they toggle nicely between hard bop/post bop and a Latin groove. He also plays exemplary piano that covers well the expectations of the percussive block Latin piano style and then comes through with some very hard-charging solos that channel a Tyneresque left hand with some fleet and hip right-hand runs.

With him are Steve Slagle on soprano and alto, Conrad Herwig on trombone, with a potent rhythm section of Richie Flores on conga, Luques Curtis on bass and Adam Cruz on the drums. They are joined with bata drumming by Roman Diaz and Diego Lopez and vocals by Diaz and Jadele MacPherson for a very hip Latin arrangement of Victor Feldman's classic "Joshua". Bill O'Connell's nicely appropriate originals form the bulk of the music otherwise, with a couple more standards for good measure.

O'Connell, Slagle and Herwig give us some advanced modern soloing and the rhythm section cooks and churns out the Latin grooves with all the power you'd hope for.

In the end this is a very nifty Latin jazz album for both its Latin and its jazz. The balance is there and apparently they took down the "no smoking" signs in the studio, for they all smoke! Get into this one and you'll be smiling pretty rapidly.

Jose Rizo's Mongorama, Baila Que Baila

We're levitating over the floorboards this morning with some more fine Latin Jazz. As the opening strains of Baila Que Baila (Saungu 004) waft over my cheesy computer music system I want to dance. But no, I must type. The band is Jose Riza's Mongorama. It's their second. Charanga-jazz modern style by a large band kicks up some dust here and I must type, not dance.

Needless to say Mongo Santamaria has influenced them. When they get the violin, flute, horns, piano, percussion, bass and vocals going, you fall into it without reflecting on influence. The vocalists are very good. There are a couple of songs in English and one is better than the other. Spanish sounds percussive when the vocalists go at it. English doesn't always have that hitting it quality. But no matter; we are talking about twelve kickers and in the end it makes no difference to the quality of this disk.

These folks are on it!

Oscar Perez Nuevo Comienzo, "Afropean Affair:" Latin Jazz with Lift and Fire

Young pianist-composer Oscar Perez fields a hot group of young lions and gives them some very nice compositions-arrangements on a nuevo Latin Jazz outing entitled Afropean Affair (Chandra 8094). There is a Blue Note-ish classicism-cum-Latin going on much of the time here. These are in essence two horn, piano and rhythm hard-bop charts, but thoroughly Latinized.

Perez plays an occasionally Tyner-influenced and always classic jazz-informed Latin piano; Greg Glassman has the trumpet brassiness of Clifford Brown and Fats Navarro through Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan and Woody Shaw; and Tenorist Stacy Dillard has eclectic roots in titans like Mobley, Shorter, Golson & early Trane. He makes something contemporary and personal out of the tradition.

The rhythm section has nice Latin jazz leverage.

It's all quite good. This is a new Latin jazz outfit that bears close watching!