Eddie Palmieri Won’t Be at SoBeJazz, But Tribute Celebration Shows His Influence

A tribute to Eddie Palmieri, “The Sun of Latin Music” will feature an all-star band at the South Beach Jazz Festival performing at the Miami Beach Bandshell on Saturday, Jan. 11. (Photo courtesy of artist management)

Health issues forced pianist, composer, and bandleader Eddie Palmieri, 88, to cancel his scheduled appearance at the South Beach Jazz Festival. But, his music and his profound impact in salsa and Afro-Cuban Jazz will be well represented in the tribute celebration at the Miami Beach Bandshell on Saturday, Jan. 11.

The concert will be anchored by Sonido Solar, a tribute band endorsed by Palmieri, featuring Louis Fouché, the show’s music director, on alto saxophone, Luques Curtis on bass, Vicente “Little Johnny” Rivero on congas, Camilo Molina on drums, and GRAMMY-nominated and Palmieri’s mentee Zaccai Curtis on piano. Two long-time Palmieri collaborators, trumpeter Brian Lynch, and trombonist Conrad Herwig, key players on Palmieri’s 1990s milestones  such as “Palmas,” “La Perfecta II,” “Vortex,” and “Arete,” will join as special guests, adding historical perspective to a celebration of a remarkable career.

The South Beach Jazz Festival tribute concert to Eddie Palmieri will be anchored by Sonido Solar, featuring Louis Fouché, the show’s music director, on alto saxophone. (Photo courtesy of Joseph Schembri)

Over more than six decades, Palmieri has claimed a one-of-a-kind place in Afro-Caribbean music. He is an avant-gardist with a traditionalist’s heart who, leading salsa orchestras or jazz bands, has found ways of negotiating the demands of the dancers on the dance floor and the expectations of his dedicated listeners. He rarely disappointed them.

Dancers could set their steps to Palmieri’s implacable tumbaos on his left hand, but then, he would take a piano solo and set out to probe the boundaries of the song, punctuating the phrases with dissonant clusters and unexpected turns, challenging the orchestra and the soloists to build castles over the rhythm section. Dancing to experimentation rarely sounded more natural.

“Well, it’s a struggle: the dancer against the orchestra,” Palmieri told me in an interview in New York some years ago. “That’s how I learned this music; that’s how I play it now, and that’s how it will always be for me. We must push forward. We must always try to extend, to explore, to better what we have. If not, we might as well just sit around and wait for death.”

In fact, in Palmieri’s music, the line between Afro-Caribbean jazz and dance music, call it salsa if you must, often blurs — and after all, jazz was not that long ago popular dance music.

“Dance is the essence of our work,” said Palmieri. “This is music for the people, to make people dance. It’s up to the artist what he wants to put on top, where he takes it, but we are dance orchestras first — and we must never forget that.”

Herwig’s trombone career strides the line between jazz and Afro-Caribbean music. It’s an approach best illustrated by his successful series of recordings, “The Latin Side of … “ in which Herwig reimagines the music and styles of jazz masters such as John Coltrane, Wayne Shorter, and McCoy Tyner within an Afro-Caribbean framework.

Trombonist Conrad Herwig is a trusted collaborator of Eddie Palmieri and will be a special guest at the South Beach Jazz Festival tribute concert. (Photo courtesy of Michael Rath Trombones)

“Think of Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Jimmie Lunceford. They were all dance bands,” notes Herwig. “When we play concerts with Eddie, hundreds of people will surround the stage to hear the solos and the interaction between musicians up close— and then behind them, there’ll be hundreds of people dancing, feeling the rhythm, listening with their feet.”

Herwig believes Palmieri’s genius is how he can excite the dancer and the listener.

“Now, that’s the fusion of the 21st century: bringing together people who don’t care about dance but love jazz and people who don’t care about jazz but love to dance. One of the highlights of my career is playing John Coltrane’s music and having people dance to it — and that idea comes from Eddie Palmieri.”

Herwig is not just a trusted collaborator for Palmieri. Their long, close association transcends the mere professional (Palmieri is the godfather of Herwig’s son), and Herwig recalls having “many conversations with Eddie about why it must be mutually exclusive? Why would you have to have something popular and danceable separate from something intellectually challenging and pleasing?  Why can’t you have both?”

Lynch, a two-time Grammy-winning player, arranger, and bandleader with an extensive career that includes stints with Horace Silver, Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, and saxophonist Phil Woods, concurs.

“I’ve played with Eddie in his dance orchestra, I played with him in his Latin jazz groups, and I’ve seen people dancing to Latin jazz, “says Lynch, a frequent musical partner of Herwig in the trombonist’s “Latin side” series.  “Perhaps the difference would be that Latin jazz would be instrumental, without a singer.”

Fouché is the co-founder with the Curtis brothers and trumpeter Jonathan Powell of Sonido Solar, the core band in this tribute. All four were members of Palmieri’s band and Fouché says “If you look at the history of Eddie’s bands, he’s always had a really keen eye for finding and developing young talent. So, it’s a huge honor to be a part of this current generation.” Sonido Solar, the name alludes to Palmieri’s moniker “The Sun of Latin Music,” was founded to “very explicitly pay tribute to Eddie and his approach to delivering this music.” Palmieri endorsed the band and played on two tracks of Sonido Solar’s debut album, released in 2022.

Long-time Eddie Palmieri collaborator, trumpeter Brian Lynch, will perform at the tribute concert as a special guest. (Photo courtesy of Tomoji Hirakata)

“One thing Eddie says, and he’s very proud of it, is that his start was as a dance orchestra leader, and everything that he does is danceable, whether it’s instrumental or there are vocals in it. And that’s what he lives by,” says Fouché, who has performed with Palmieri since 2010.

He says having the chance to perform with Eddie was a dream for him.

“I always loved his compositions, the energy he transmits, and how it hit my spirit,” he says. As a listener first and then on the bandstand, Fouche found Palmieri’s overall approach “fascinating.”

“He takes a lot of risks and takes the music in very interesting directions,” says Fouché. “But the core, the rhythmic core, the structural core of the compositions is always there. If it’s not there, he doesn’t want it. You’ll hear (in his music) the same ingredients of those 1940s records he idolizes. And it’s a really cool thing because it’s a combination: it feels rooted — but then it also feels like it’s in outer space sometimes, and he’s found a really unique way of doing that.”

Eddie Palmieri’s music and his profound impact in salsa and Afro-Cuban Jazz will be well represented in the tribute celebration at the Miami Beach Bandshell on Saturday, Jan. 11.(Photo courtesy of artist management)

While discussing Afro-Cuban jazz, Palmieri laid out his views decades ago.

“You can’t just say you know the tradition, or you respect it. You must understand it,” he told me emphatically during an interview. “Those who say that it doesn’t matter never got it to begin with. You must understand la clave (the basic rhythmic pattern in Afro-Cuban music), and you must understand the dance patterns. Every rhythm had a step —  the mambo, the cha cha cha, the guaracha —  and everybody knew how to dance it. It was an art. Then you put the harmonic advances of jazz with those rhythmic patterns from Africa that have been with us for centuries, and you don’t need anything else. You have the strongest, most complex, beautiful music on earth.”

WHAT: A tribute to Eddie Palmieri, “The Sun of Latin Music” featuring an all-star band comprising former and current Eddie Palmieri musicians including GRAMMY-winning trumpeter Brian Lynch and trombonist Conrad Herwig.

WHEN: 8 p.m., Saturday, Jan. 11

WHERE: The Miami Beach Bandshell. 7275 Collins Ave, Miami Beach

COST: $42.23, $57.68, $73.13, $83.43, $490.28 club level.

INFORMATION:  sobejazzfestival.com

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