Jan. 22, 2003 – "Afro-Cuban is the fundamental," pianist Eddie Palmieri told an interviewer in 1995, "but the music is derivative, since we were weaned from Cuba before the umbilical cord was cut in the '60s, and jazz influenced Cuba before then, and jazz was influenced by the Cuban structures as well."
The seven-time Grammy Award winner, a definitive voice in Latin music for four decades, will bring all of those influences to the stage of the Reichhold Center for the Arts on Saturday in the fourth presentation of the 24th season at the amphitheater on the University of the Virgin Islands St. Thomas campus.
Palmieri's latest release, "La Perfecta II," came out on the Concord label last year — a recreating of the sound of his '60s conjunto that was well received. A JazzReview.com critic wrote: "Performing once again some of the music of the original group, 'La Perfecta II' lets a new generation appreciate the irresistibility of the music, extroverted and deep in a groove on the surface, but actually complex and structured underneath … And the trombone choir effect that his arrangements establish, as on "El Molestoso II," add depth and richness, as a legato background for the singers or as a means to punch out concluding thought with bold-faced exclamation points."
The punctuation mark impression is one that Palmieri is known for making. Howard Mandel wrote for The Wire that he "speaks as he plays, often inserting exclamation marks. As happens in most of his music, on 'La Perfecta II' points of climax are provided by mathematically precise resolutions of poly-rhythms derived from Yoruba religious rites transplanted to Cuba and other Caribbean islands by African slaves."
Palmieri's band for the Reichhold concert will comprise Conrad Herwig and Doug Beavers on trombone, Brian Lynch on trumpet, George Delgado on congas, Johnny Rodriguez Jr. on bongos, Joe Santiago on bass, Jose Claussell on timbales, Karen Joseph on flute and Herman Olivera on vocals. All but Joseph recorded on "La Perfecta II."
Natively a New Yorker, born in 1936 in Spanish Harlem, but culturally Puerto Rican, Palmieri studied classical piano as a child and appeared at Carnegie Recital Hall at the age of 11. Two years later, he was playing for pay — on timbales in his uncle's Nuyorican band. He had a tough act to follow for a while — that of his older brother, the late pianist Charlie Palmieri, a celebrate salsa legend who played at the Palladium in Tito Puente's band.
But, Palmieri has said, "by 15, it was goodbye timbales and back to the piano. Until this day. I'm a frustrated percussionist, so I take it out on the piano!" And, for a keyboard touch that nobody would mistake for light, make that an acoustic grand piano, despite his forays into electronic experimentation.
Much of his musical inspiration came from the top Latin artists who played the Palladium, Manhattan's "Home of the Mambo." Among them was Tito Puente, born just a few blocks away from him and with whom he would finally collaborate in 2000 on an album — Puente's last — "Obra Maestra" ("Masterpiece"), which brought them both traditional and Latin Grammy Awards — Palmieri's sixth and seventh.
A chance meeting with a trombonist, the late Barry Rogers, at the Triton Club, another Nuyorican dance hall of that era, let Palmieri in 1961 to form his Conjunto La Perfecta — an atypical ensemble with the brass based in trombones instead of trumpets. The band, in existence until 1958, comprised two trombones, flute, piano, bass and Latin percussion plus, often, a vocalist — and, with its infectious, soaring sound, was known as "the band with the crazy roaring elephants."
"Palmieri's sound has always been quicker, wittier, denser, horn-ier, more improvisational and more ambitious than even the finest conventional Latin orchestras," Mandel wrote in a 1995 interview. A signature element of his music is the band's trombanga, in which a swelling phrase gains intensity with each repetition.
Palmieri, whose preferred composers for personal listening include Chopin and Debussy, takes a mathematical — more precisely, a geometrical — approach to music. One reviewer said that he "applies absolutely serious endeavor to the making of fun in his music."
As a composer, Palmieri has celebrated the significance of African culture in the Hispanic world. At the same time, according to Afropop Worldwide, his own music "carries more of the harmonic innovations of 20th century European music — clusters, whole-tone scales, fearless dissonance, systematized composition — than any other salsa pianist's … Palmieri is a notorious perfectionist in the studio; all his records are good."
He won the first-ever Latin jazz album Grammy, in 1975 for "The Sun of Latin Music," and repeated a year later with "Unfinished Masterpiece." He collected three more for "Palo Pa' Rumba" in 1984, "Solito" in 1985 and "La Verdad" in 1987.
Two of his performances in 1988 were recorded live by the Smithsonian Institution for its catalog of the National Museum of American History. He received the Eubie Blake Award in 1991, saw his lobbing efforts for the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences to create a category for Latin jazz come to fruition in 1995, was honored for his contributions as a band leader at the 1998 Heineken Jazz Festival in San Juan, received an honorary doctorate from Berklee College of Music, and enjoys the distinction of having been honored by two legislatures — that of New York and that of Puerto Rico.
In 1999, he released his first salsa album in 11 years — "El Rumbero del Piano" — reclaiming his place, one reviewer wrote, as "leader of one of Latin music's most phenomenal dance bands." The CD, a compilation of salsa, bomba, plena, son montuno and jazz, plays tribute to legendary figures of Cuban musica tropical and Puerto Rican folk music.
Palmieri counts among his influences not only the leading Latin bands of his youth and many straight-ahead jazz artists of the day but also the music of his roots, which he has diligently searched out. "Cuban music provides the fundamental from which I never move," he says. "Whatever has to be built must be built from there. It's that cross-cultural effect that makes magnificent music."
Ticket information
Curtain time Saturday is 8 p.m. The show is all but guaranteed to please those who spent most of the evening on their feet, hips in motion, at last year's Celia Cruz spectacular.
Tickets are $35 and $25 in the open-air seating. (The $55 seats in the covered section are sold out — unless you happen to luck onto a return.)
You can order tickets online until Thursday noon at the Reichhold Center Web site. They also may be reserved using a charge card by calling the box office at 693-1559 and are being sold on St. Thomas at the box office, both Modern Music shops, Parrot Fish Music and Crystal and Gifts Galore; and on St. John at Connections. The box office hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday, 10 to 6 on Thursday and Friday, and 11 to 9 on Saturday. For more information, call 693-1559.

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