JAZZ REVIEW : Latin Ensemble: Puente Captures a Crowd

Before a packed and very hip crowd at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano Wednesday evening, Tito Puente’s nine-member Latin Ensemble kicked off a five-night jaunt through the Southland with playing that was high-spirited and triumphant. This is a group for anyone who loves jazz or salsa--or the astonishing hybrid thunder Puente has invented by mixing them.

The band opened with fire on “TP’s Special,” swerved over to the familiar vamped intro to “On Broadway”--a vehicle for Mario Rivera’s flute and Piro Rodriguez’s trumpet--and then settled into a hypnotic groove on John Coltrane’s “Equinox.” By this point, everyone in the house could tell something wonderful was at work.

Rivera’s urgent, liquidly wailing soprano took a dolphin ride across a white-water percussion surge and gave way to Piro’s building command (complete with Dizzy Gillespie runs in the upper register). Sonny Bravo’s piano took on the proud shimmer of a steel drum. Coltrane’s beautiful line has seldom if ever been carved from such enchanting force.

Puente is a brilliant musician and band leader, a man with unusual musical vision who has advanced two musical formats. He also is a showman with an astute sense of dramatic timing. With the audience already in his grasp, he brought on his gorgeous, sultry-voiced niece, Millie Puente. Her burnished sound and poised-yet-relaxed self-assurance during “Bombaliete,” “De Corazon de Corazon,” and “Inorvidable” suggested that her future has arrived.

The heart of the concert was three Puente chestnuts played with raucous abandon: “Mombo Diablo,” a Cal Tjader-like line that featured Rivera’s insistent, gruff tenor saxophone; “Autumn Leaves,” with a pensive Tito on vibraphone, and “Oye Como Va,” one of the ensemble’s signature pieces, a real gut-busting flag-waver that brought the whole band into a unified pulse. If the Coach House only had a dance floor. . . .