96 Hours: Latin Jazz Youth Ensemble

The strains of Latin jazz will heat up the city streets when the Latin Jazz Youth Ensemble plays this Sunday in Union Square as part of the ongoing free Jewels in the Square performances. Far from a kiddie show, this group of about 15 young musicians, who range in age from 10 to 18 years old, display a serious professionalism.

Founded in 2001 by Bay Area bandleader and San Francisco State University faculty member John Calloway along with Arturo Riera and Sylvia Ramirez, the ensemble boasts a resume that any professional would envy, including opening for jazz greats such as the Cuban bassist Israel "Cachao" López, and jamming with the likes of noted pianist Chuchito Valdés.

"It's quite an opportunity for a student musician," Ramirez says. "We are really unique - we've been around since 2001 and have never charged the students to participate. We recruit from all over the community, especially public schools, where kids may have a lot of natural talent and some training, but they might never have had access to private instruction in music."

Read more at the SF Chronicle website.

SF Jazz: Max Raabe & the Palast Orchester

In the early morning hours, I lie awake and listen to NPR and allow random items from Morning Edition to seep into my head. What I remember can be odd-- occasionally a news item crosses over into my dreams -- was I really arguing with Sarah Palin about her lipstick?

The other day all I could remember was the sound of one of the little thirty second musical transitions, and when I finally got up and looked on the NPR site to find out what it was, I ran across the name of Max Raabe. One link led to another and I found myself utterly charmed by his lounge-lizard approach to the dance music of the 20s and 30s. Then I found out he was coming to the Paramount Theatre in Oakland, courtesy of SF Jazz.

Apparently Raabe and his orchestra, coming off of a highly successful run at Carnegie Hall, have wider fan base than I knew, because the gorgeous Art Deco Paramount was filled to the rafter with ardent fans.

The Palaster's appeal is in the utterly tight, thoroughly serious approach to comedy. The band looks immaculate and plays even better, evincing the sound of a bygone era of Weimar, Germany that occasionally makes someone like me -- who grew up steeped in 1930s Hollywood stereotypes --wonder if someplace in an alley jack-booted thugs are kicking a victim to death.

Raabe himself is a dry and witty front man, a study in leisured boredom as he croons through delightful tunes such as "My Gorilla has a Villa in a Zoo," as well as Brechtian favorites from "Mahagonny" and "Three Penny Opera."

By the time he got round to the band's perennial favorite encore number, an austerely rendered cover of Britney Spears' "Oops I Did It Again," they had the crowd in the palm of their hands... and wondering when they'll be back again.

Program Notes.

Music Review : John Santos and the Machete Ensemble: The Farewell Concert

It kinda started in your ribs -- just a little tic from side to side that happened reflexively as the Machete Ensemble sent the first notes into the air. Pretty soon it moved into the tip of your shoulders -- just a bit of a bounce. And that set your head nodding in time with the beat. Before long, you found yourself swinging and swaying in the Palace of Fine Arts Theater's groovy reclining seats, which luckily left a lot of leg room in front, in case you wanted to ... you know ... get up and dance. Which most people did.

It seemed like everyone who was ever part of the San Francisco Latin jazz scene was on hand to bid adios to John Santos' Machete Ensemble, which disbanded in a blowout concert on November 12 after twenty-one years of turning up the Afro-Latin heat in the Bay Area.

All night long, a parade of former Machete members as well as friends and family came up on the stage to jam with the core group of Macheteros -- Orlando Torriente on vocals, John Calloway on flute, Ron Stallings and Melecio Magdaluyo on saxes and clarinet, Wayne Wallace on trombone, Murray Low on piano, David Belove on bass, Paul van Wageningen on drums and Orestes Vilató on just about everything else. And sitting in the middle of it all was the genial, chatty Santos himself, on the congas emblazoned with red, white and blue "Impeach Bush" stickers -- as charming as ever, although, as he admitted, talking a little faster than usual so as to fit in all the fun in a brief amount of time.

Read more on KQED.org's Art & Culture site.

Music Review : SF Jazz Festival: Kamikaze Ground Crew

For their first performance back in the Bay Area in 13 years, the Kamikaze Ground Crew got a warm welcome at the Great American Music Hall at the San Francisco Jazz Festival. After all, it's really a hometown crowd for the seven-member band, most of whom still have local ties, even though the crew is largely based now in New York.

It's a loose knit group of talent -- all of them involved in lots of other projects. Co-founders Doug Wieselman and Gina Leishman both write music for dance and theater -- the latter most recently composing scores for Berkeley Rep's Mother Courage and Cal Shakes' As You Like It -- and trumpet-player Steven Bernstein and Kenny Wolleson head their own rollicking band Sex Mob. In fact, a majority of the compositions that the KGC unveiled on Wednesday night, came courtesy of Leishman and Bernstein, but those looking for the exuberance of Sex Mob, or the witty, light touch of Leishman's Shakespearean songs like "It was a lover and his lass" would have been confused at the start.

What seems clear is that in the years since KGC's start as the pit band for the Flying Karamazov Brothers, a lot of experimenting has been going on. So it was that some of what we got that night was esoteric, some of it impenetrable, while other pieces were lively and even antic. All put together, though, it made for a program that suffered from uneven pacing.

Read more on KQED.org's Art & Culture site.

Music Review : SF Jazz Festival: Arturo Sandoval

What is it about los Cubanos? Artists like Los Carpinteros craft incredibly sculpted social critiques. Dancers such as Carlos Acosta, the Carreno clan and the Feijoo sisters have stormed the ballet world. And their musicians -- their musicians always rock the house.

The audience in the Herbst Theater was primed from the outset when trumpet master Arturo Sandoval took the spotlight at the San Francisco Jazz Festival. And if there was any disappointment that evening, it was that the show had to end some time.

Backed by a tight-knit quintet that included Ed Calle on sax, Javier Concepcion on keyboards, Armando Gola on bass, Tomasito Cruz on congas and Alexis Arce on drums, Sandoval hit the stage at a blistering pace, dispatching double digit high notes on his trumpet solos with almost irritating ease.

Read more on KQED.org's Art & Culture site.