“What is the influence of Latin rhythms on my music?” David Sánchez says during an interview between sets. “That’s a hard question — I think in lines and melodies when I’m playing, but I’m feeling rhythm even when I’m doing bar lines.” After playing two shows at Jazz Showcase during a five-night stint, he’s charged up as he taps out a typical Puerto Rican plena rhythm with his hands to demonstrate how he absorbs the folk music of his native island while interpreting straight-ahead jazz from Wayne Shorter, opening up a Caribbean-folk/urban-American jazz dialogue with free influences from Ornette Coleman. “Plena and straight-ahead jazz have been done,” he explains, “so I want to give a new vibe to plena and a new vibe to jazz.”


Accomplished tenor saxophonist, composer, and bandleader, Sánchez started out with congas and bongos as an eight-year-old growing up in Guaynabo near San Juan, but he took up the sax at age 12 because there were already too many percussionists on an island without much of a jazz scene. At 19 he left Puerto Rico for a music scholarship at Rutgers, playing also in New York City with Latin jazzmen Eddie Palmieri, Paquito D’Rivera, and Danilo Perez, and eventually touring with Dizzy Gillespie, among others. In 1994, he made his recording debut as a leader. The recently-released Travesía (Columbia) follows up his last two Latin Grammy-nominated albums from that label.
He finds an apt title for his latest, since “travesía” can have shades of meaning “a crossing over,” “transgression,” or simply “a journey.” At the Jazz Showcase, he opens with a seductively rendered “Prince Of Darkness” by Wayne Shorter, which appears on his album with a full sextet. But for the Chicago shows, the band is pared down to a quintet — piano, bass, drums, and arguably Sanchez’ equal on alto sax, Miguel Zenón — without the recording’s percussionist. Pianist Edsel Gomez begins with the song’s melodic motif, and soon the saxes are dueling between upper and lower registers, weaving in and out of lightly Latin-accented drumming from Mexico City-native Antonio Sanchez and rhythmic variations from bassist Hans Glawischnig. This intro strikes the tone for the night, with deceptively foregrounded U.S.-jazz chops that blow from hot blues to free sax solos, with quotes of Charlie Parker and John Coltrane.
Toward the end of the set, Sánchez introduces a hybrid plena/jazz tune. Originating in the late 19th century near Ponce, plena emphasizes beats one and three, with elements of call and response between soloist and chorus. Rooted equally in West African and Moor-influenced Spanish percussion, plena is sometimes called “el periódico cantao,” or “sung newspaper,” for its social commentary. In that tradition, Sánchez’ cultural fusions intermingle with current events — as on his composition “Paz Pa’ Vieques (Seis),” a mix of jazz with Puerto Rican “seis,” another Spanish-influenced folk tradition that in this case comments on the use of the island for U.S. military operations. But these messages are never heavy-handed, as his sets in Chicago fly without a Latin percussionist, leaving the subtle folk influences to draw the audience in by way of solid jazz skills.
“That’s our job,” Sánchez says from the stage, “to lift spirits and forget for a minute about CNN and ABC.”
26 October 2001, Illinois Entertainer

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