GPAC presents Poncho Sanchez and Terence Blanchard in their hot new project, Cubano Be! Cubano Bop!, on Sunday, April 22 at 7 p.m. With the backing of the Poncho Sanchez Latin Jazz Band, Sanchez and Blanchard pay tribute to the legacy of the Original Conga King, Chano Pozo, and his co-conspirator in Latin Jazz, Dizzy Gillespie. With their 1947 Carnegie Hall concert, Pozo and Gillespie put Afro-Cuban Jazz on the map, literally changing the face of musical history and the course of American Jazz.

WHO:            Poncho Sanchez with Terence Blanchard

WHEN:          Sunday, April 22, 7 p.m.

TICKETS:     Single tickets are $25, $30, $35, plus handling fee.

Box Office Hours: Monday through Friday between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. and noon the day of performance. All major credit cards accepted. Call (901) 751-7500 or buy online at www.GPACweb.com.

WHERE:         Germantown Performing Arts Centre
                         1801 Exeter Road
                         Germantown, TN 38138

CONTACT:    For more information or to arrange an interview with the artist(s), please contact Anne Trebil at (901) 751-7501 or anne@gpacweb.com.

WEB: http://www.ponchosanchez.com/unflashed.html/

WEB: http://www.terenceblanchard.com/

Poncho Sanchez

If music were about pictures, percussionist Poncho Sanchez's music would best be described as a kaleidoscopic swirl of some of the hottest colors and brightest lights to emerge from either side of the border. At any given show, on any given record, fragments of Latin jazz, swing, bebop, salsa and other infectious grooves collide and churn in a fiery swirl, with results that are no less than dazzling.

All of these sounds and more come together in Psychedelic Blues, Sanchez's twenty-fourth recording on Concord Records. "The last couple records have gone a little heavy on the soul music, which has gone over really well in our live shows, but we wanted to do more of a straightahead Latin jazz record this time - something in the tradition of our earlier Concord records that we made back in the '80s."

With that strategy in mind, Sanchez enlisted guitarist Andrew Synowiec to change up the sound on a few tracks. Synowiec, a regular member of the L.A.-based Gordon Goodwin Big Phat Band, landed the gig about five minutes into his audition. "He came through the door with just a guitar and an amplifier," says Sanchez. "No effects pedals or other gadgets. He plugged and started to play, and I said, 'No more auditions. We're using this guy.'"

Along with Synowiec is the same lineup that has backed Sanchez on several records and countless live shows: keyboardist/arranger David Torres; saxophonist Javier Vergara; trumpeter/flugelhornist Ron Blake; trombonist/arranger Francisco Torres; bassist/vocalist Tony Banda; timbalero George Ortiz; and percussionist/vocalist Joey De Leon. Even a couple alumni from earlier configurations of Sanchez's band - baritone saxophonist Scott Martin and percussionist Alfredo Ortiz - step back in to lend a hand on Psychedelic Blues. A few of these seasoned players go back more than 30 years with Sanchez, back to some of his earliest gigs as a local fixture in the Los Angeles club circuit.

Although born in Laredo, Texas, in 1951 to a large Mexican-American family, Sanchez grew up in a suburb of L.A., where he was raised on an unusual cross section of sounds that included straightahead jazz, Latin jazz and American soul. By his teen years, his musical consciousness had been solidified by the likes of John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Cal Tjader, Mongo Santamaria, Wilson Pickett and James Brown. Along the way, he taught himself to play guitar, flute, drums and timbales, but eventually settled on the congas.

At 24, after working his way around the local club scene for several years, he landed a permanent spot in Cal Tjader's band in 1975. "I learned a great deal from Cal," says Sanchez, "but it wasn't as though he sat me down and taught me lessons like a schoolteacher. Mostly it was just a matter of being around such a great guy. It was the way he conducted himself, the way he talked to people, the way he presented himself onstage. He was very elegant, very dignified, and when he played, he played beautifully. The touch that he had on the vibes - nobody has that sound. To me, he was - and is, and always will be - the world's greatest vibe player."

Sanchez remained with Tjader until the bandleader's death in 1982. That same year, he signed with Concord for the release of Sonando!, an album that marked the beginning of a prolific musical partnership that has spanned more than 25 years and has yielded two dozen recordings.

Psychedelic Blues, the latest product of that partnership, opens with the simmering "Cantaloupe Island," a Herbie Hancock composition recast in a Latin jazz groove. A number of soloists step forward here, most notably Torres on trombone and Synowiec on guitar - all weaving effortlessly above a firmly anchored rhythm section.

Premier Latin trumpeter Arturo Sandoval - Sanchez's friend since their first gig together at a festival in Sardinia, Italy, some twenty years ago - makes a guest appearance via a rendition of Freddie Hubbard's "Crisis." The track showcases Sandoval's respect and reverence for the American bebop maestro who had passed away just a few months before the Psychedelic Blues sessions.

The title track is a fast-moving mambo, originally written by Sonny Henry and arranged here by Francisco Torres, who attaches a surprise at the end of the track. "Francisco really souped it up," says Sanchez. "The song has some nice horn lines, and some great jazz riffs, and then it ends in a bolero. So the song burns almost all the way through, and then at the end it shifts into a ballad."

The intriguing centerpiece to the album is a Willie Bobo medley featuring "I Don't Know" (a Sonny Henry piece commonly associated with Bobo), the laid back "Fried Neckbones and Some Homefries" and the slightly more urgent "Spanish Grease." All three of these songs merge effortlessly to create a nostalgic nod to the revered Latin and Afro-Cuban jazz percussionist of the '60s and '70.

Further into the set, Sanchez and the band turn "Silver's Serenade" - originally a swing tune by Horace Silver - into a mambo with personality to burn, thanks in large part to solo work by Francisco Torres. When Poncho himself steps forward to deliver some syncopated conga lines, the net result is an infectious groove.

The salsa-flavored closer, "Con Sabor Latino," is an old song by Rene Touzet, a native of Cuba who became a well known Latin bandleader in Los Angeles in the '50s and '60s. In many ways, the song is Sanchez's tribute to some of the musical memories of his childhood. "My older brothers and sisters used to see Touzet play at the Hollywood Paladium," he says. "Back then, Chico Sesma was the only Latin disc jockey on the radio in southern California, and 'Con Sabor Latino' was his theme song."

Whether it's salsa, straightahead jazz, Latin jazz, or even elements of soul and blues, the mesmerizing array of sounds and colors from Poncho Sanchez's youth have telegraphed across the decades and continue to inform his creative sensibilities to this day. "There's room for a lot of different sounds in our music," he says. "I think people have come to know that that's what Poncho Sanchez is all about. We put it all together in a pot, boil it together and come out with a big stew. This isn't some marketing strategy to sell records. These are the sounds I grew up with. So when I play this music, I'm not telling a lie. I'm telling my story. This is the real thing."

Terence Blanchard

The crucible of catastrophe impels creative expression. Since the turn of the century, this has taken shape in manifold ways, from artistic responses to the 9/11 terrorist attacks to the war in Iraq to the pummeling of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. It is this latter calamity that informs Crescent City native son Terence Blanchards impassioned song cycle, A Tale of Gods Will (A Requiem for Katrina), a 13-track emotional tour de force of anger, rage, compassion, melancholy and beauty. A Tale of Gods Will, which features Blanchards quintetpianist Aaron Parks, saxophonist Brice Winston, bassist Derrick Hodge, drummer Kendrick Scottas well as a 40-member string orchestra, is his third album for Blue Note Records. (Since signing with the label in 2003, Blanchard has released two other critically acclaimed albums, Bounce and Flow, the latter of which was nominated for two Grammys in 2006.)

This is what we are called to do as artists, says the trumpeter, bandleader, arranger and film-score composer. We document our social surroundings and give our impressions of events. The problem with Katrina is that the devastation is so vast that theres only been a trickle of art so far. Were all still digesting what went on and what continues to happen. Its like an unending story. For me, like so many others, its taken me a moment to get my mind around all of this. I knew I needed to express this musically to keep the story alive, but so many important thingsthe safety of family members, figuring out how to rebuild my mothers housenever allowed me the time to breathe for a minute.

An important jumpstart for A Tale of Gods Will was director Spike Lees decision to document the aftermath of Katrina on film,inwhatturnedouttobethefour-hourHBOdocumentary,WhenTheLevees Broke, which aired last year. Lee, who has enlisted Blanchard on numerous occasions to score his films, such as Mo Better Blues, Malcolm X, The 25th Hour and Inside Man, tapped him once again for his documentary. That started me to make some musical statements for this moment in time, Blanchard says. Its part of the grieving process. Once I wrote some of the music for Spikes film, I knew I could take it and expand upon it. Meanwhile, guys in my band were writing music that reflected on what happened in the aftermath of Katrina. This provided me with the perfect opportunity to bring the band all together.

Four of the Levees tracksLevees, Wading Through, The Water and Funeral Dirgeformed a nucleus of material for A Tale of Gods Will. Melodically and structurally, the tunes are the same, but the arrangements are different, says Blanchard, who cites as an example the dramatic piece Levees with its lyrical trumpeted woe. In that case, theres a long orchestral opening and interlude. Spike had limited resources in filmingthedocumentary,whichmeanstherewasnomoneyfororchestration, says Blanchard. He adds, The whole idea for this piece was to show the calm before the storm that you can hear in the string arrangement and the interlude is when the storm comes and the levees break. The second section is when people are on their roofs waiting for help, so the trumpet cries.

Recording this album challenged Blanchard, who says that he had to contain myself, but I was so frustrated and in rage. I wanted the trumpet to scream on every track, but I feel that God is using me to speak for all the souls in New Orleans. Were all still tired, but its almost as if things have gone back to normal for people outside while our lives here dont matter.

Another tune from Levees, Water, features a full orchestral plunge with Blanchards wailing trumpet emerging. Blanchard explains that with all the flood waters still high, it looked as if the city was castaway in an ocean. The water was omnipresent, says Blanchard who was out of the city when disaster struck yet was watching CNN nonstop. I was in disbelief seeing how 80 percent of the city was under water and that my old neighborhood had 12 feet of water. I remember when I was a kid and Hurricane Betsy hit New Orleans and there were a few feet of water. That scared me then and actually made me fear water.

The other Lee-related tracks are the slowly loping melodic gem, Wading Through (also used in Lees film Inside Man) and the march-beat FuneralDirge, a tune Blanchard says was one of the hardest pieces for me to write. To see your city on TV with dead bodies in neighborhoods you knew was deep. It was as if it were Baghdad. This was my attempt to pay homage to the people who lost their lives, to give people a proper burial. It was intense working on these pieces that sometimes I had to take a breath, go outside and play with the kids, and then come back at it.

Other Blanchard tunes on A Tale of Gods Will include Dear Mom, his personal tribute to his mother who lost her home (her emotional first return to see there mains was documented by Lee in Levees)and a series of ghost tunes interspersed throughout the album: the African beat-drenched Ghost of Congo Square, the trumpet-bass dance Ghost of Betsy (about the aforementioned Hurricane Betsy) and the plaintive tune sketched by saxophone and drums, Ghost of 1927 (another flood that ravaged New Orleans). The ghost pieces were unplanned at the onset of the recording sessions, which took place in Los Angeles and Seattle.

They just came to me throughout the recording, Blanchard says. The ghosts represent the warnings of the past. In the firstone,weaddedinhandclapsandpercussionaswellasthechant,Thisisthetale of Gods will. Thats what this story is about: Gods will be done. We cant understand why things happened, but we can trust that we can learn something from it. The band member contributions prove to be just as potent and reflective as Blanchards music. Parks Ashé, which translated from the Yoruban language means and so it shall be. He explains that the beautiful melody acts as a benediction: an acceptance ofand release frompast troubles and an ushering in of something new, determined and optimistic. Blanchard notes, The emotion and melody set the tone for the album in capturing the exhaustion a lot of people felt after the storm and flood.

Winstons melancholic In Time of Need, is buoyed by Blanchard and Scotts wordless vocals. This tune marks a shift in Brices artistic career, Blanchard says. He wanted it to feature my trumpet, so I said, sure, but slowly I took myself out of the piece so that it became his feature. Winston, who spent his entire adult life in New Orleans, says he was compelled to write the tune to express, through music, my sadness and frustration for my own familys tumultuous existence as well as for the countless people affected as a result of human ineptitude.

Scotts epic piece, Mantra, begins with a bass feature with tablas in the mix that opens into a pensive and then dramatic sound scape. Scott says, Our obligation is to help those who survived rebuild their lives and to rebuild their communities safer than they were before. The word mantra&is characterized as a statement that is repeated frequently. My greatest hope is that this recording and this song will serve as a mantra for healing and renewal, for reflection and progression, and as an offering to touch peoples lives for the better.

Hodge says that his ultimately hopeful tune, Over There, is about the constant search in life for something better. He notes, Our present circumstances can make it difficult for us at times to see better for ourselves. Sometimes that Over There may be just a song that can help us through. Blanchard explains that the song was captured on tape when the band was sound checking the mikes. After subsequent takes, all agreed that the first run through was the keeper. Blanchard adds that the entire project, like Hodges song, is about gratitude. Requiem tells the story, he says, that needs to heard so that people will continue to talk about what happened after Katrina.

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