Jul
29
Arturo Sandoval at Blues Alley Review
Blues Alley has a great small scale feel to it and there are few bad seats in the house (a big change up for those of you used to going to shows at the amphitheatres). When I went there to see Arturo Sandoval, I ended up sitting about two feet away from Arturo in the front row. I could practically feel the spit flying out of his trumpet while he played.
This show was a lot different than the first time I saw Arturo perform. M parents had taken me to see him at Town Point Park in Norfolk, VA when I was a kid. His performance was a part of the summertime music series in the park in front of thousands of fans (quite different from Blues Alley). The entire show was balls to the wall Latin Jazz/Funk that had the crowd dancing.
I expected Arturo to play some hot Afro-Cuban jazz, but at this show he blew me away by covering all of the bases of jazz. He began the show with a jazz standard and followed it with some crazy 80s-synthesizer-jazz piece. It was interesting seeing musicians rock the synth (the saxophonist even had an Electronic Wind Instrument) at Blues Alley, somewhere where I picture jazz “purists” vomiting at the thought of synthesizers. However, I didn’t hear any complaints about him putting some funk on it.
The best moment came when Arturo was playing a chilled-out ballad. Some girls at the table next to me were gettin’ their drunk on and were starting to get obnoxious. Arturo stopped the band and explained that theirs a time to be loud and crazy and a time to listen, so he basically said “shut the F— up”. What was really weird was that the girls just thought that it was funny and quieted down, but he was pissed.
What is most notable about the whole show is the level of badassness that Arturo has on so many instruments. Of course he can rock the trumpet, but he kills the timbales and blew his own keyboardist out of the water on keys. I couldn’t believe that he was so versatile on several instruments. Some bandleaders like to pretend that they can play multiple instruments, but Arturo is definitely a virtuoso musician.