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Paquito D'Rivera Hamming It up with a Cuban Accent

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The Cuban saxophonist, clarinetist and composer Paquito DRivera, now 60, came to the United States in 1981. Cuban music is the core of his repertory, but he has never, before now, led a Cuban band in this country.

Paquito DRivera played a run of shows with his new band.
That may seem strange, except that hes been busy with broader ideas. Or maybe just one big idea: Afro-Latin music in the New World. His bands have included besides many from the United States musicians from Puerto Rico, Peru, Brazil, Panama, Argentina, Venezuela, Curaao, and on and on. His projects as a bandleader tend toward mergers of classical with jazz, funk with tango, Brazilian choro with Cuban habanera. Thats when hes not making spot appearances with orchestras, adding solos to a program of, say, Benny Goodman or George Gershwin or Astor Piazzolla.

On Sunday Mr. DRivera ended a first-time run of shows at Dizzys Club Coca-Cola with his new band, Cuban Jazz: The Next Generation. It included the pianist Manuel Valera, the guitarist Luis Mario Ochoa, the bassist Oscar Stagnaro, the drummer Ernesto Simpson and the percussionist Pedro Martinez. (All are Cuban-born, except for the Peruvian Mr. Stagnaro, who was filling in for the Cuban Armando Gola.)

Friday nights early set, among other things, demonstrated Mr. DRiveras deference to the audience. It started sweet and plush, and gradually became deep and complex. He is a complicated performer: a virtuoso, a scholar and a gold-plated ham in equal parts. The first tune, Chiquita Blues, may have seemed academic by description: it combined a 12-bar blues with a Cuban contradanza, based on the recent novel Chiquita, by Antonio Orlando Rodrguez, about a 26-inch-tall Cuban woman who became an American circus attraction a century ago. But the piece was heavy with ham: busy, cute, amiable music, with the bandleaders alto saxophone as a chattering through-line. It came and went and didnt linger in your mind.

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