Oscar Hernández knows he might be stepping on some toes, but he’s got to be honest.
The pianist, arranger and leader of the triple Grammy Award-winning Spanish Harlem Orchestra, Hernández realizes that his opinion will be considered near blasphemy in some circles, “but sometimes dance trivializes the art form,” he said. “I prefer when we do sit-down concerts.”
Now, this might sound like peanut butter denouncing jelly, or Batman dropping a dime on Robin. Since emerging from New York City’s late-1960s Latin dance scene as a combination of Cuban, Puerto Rican and other Caribbean rhythms, the musical idiom known as salsa has been inextricably linked to the hip-swiveling dance style called by the same name.
He knows that when the Spanish Harlem Orchestra returns to the SFJAZZ Center’s Miner Auditorium Saturday and Sunday, Dec. 21-22, the dance floor will be open (though determined terpsichoreans will need to find their own space to twirl at the Kuumbwa Jazz Center concerts Thursday Dec. 19). Hernández can cut the rug himself when he feels the notion, “but there’s a time and place for everything,” said in a recent phone conversation.
The timing of these concerts mean that instead of focusing mostly on tunes from the ninth album “Swing Forever,” which was released by Ovation Records in August, the band’s includes arrangements of “typical Christmas songs, aguinaldos from Puerto Rico,” Hernández said.
“We’re setting those songs and rhythms, what people listen to during the Christmas season, and arranged them for the band. But being children of what this country is about, we’ve also taken some American classics and converted them to salsa dura, like ‘The Christmas Song’ done in a Latin style.”
Whatever repertoire the band delivers, Hernández is proud of the players who’ve joined him on the band’s quarter-century run. As he sees it, what’s the point of assembling a band with some of the toughest players in the world if people focus elsewhere.
“Sometimes dancers, if they’re in front of the band, the audience is looking at the dancers,” he said. “I get that people want to dance. I’ll take the criticism. But for dancing, they can see many bands on any other night.”
Launched in 2001, the 13-piece Spanish Harlem Orchestra includes a cadre of musical innovators like Venezuelan timbalero Luisito Quintero, who spent years on the road with vocal great Oscar D’Leon before performing and recording with Latin music and jazz giants like Tito Puente, Eddie Palmieri, Herbie Hancock and Jack DeJohnette. East Bay-reared trombonist Doug Beavers is one of the band’s featured soloists, and trumpeter Alex North, a top New York player, has contributed to more than 100 albums, including many by the most acclaimed bandleaders in Afro-Cuban jazz.
Anchoring the horn section is saxophonist/flutist Mitch Frohman, a founding member of the SHO who like Hernández established himself on New York’s Latin music scene during the heyday of salsa dura in the mid-‘70s.
“We’re trying to continue the tradition of the post-Tito generation, the hard salsa era of the 1970s,” Frohman said. I was with Tito Puente for 25 years and a bunch of years with Mongo Santamaria. With both of those bands we played San Francisco all the time, and I love reliving that with Spanish Harlem Orchestra, introducing that sound to the next generation.”
Hernández gained wisespread respect during his 13-year stint as pianist, arranger and music director for Ruben Blades, the composer, vocalist, actor and erstwhile Panamanian presidential candidate. Known for bringing extended narratives to Latin dance music and infusing his lyrics with social and political commentary, Blades provided Hernández with a capacious view of salsa’s creative possibilities.
Many of those possibilties flow from the New York City’s ethnic cauldron. Now based in Los Angeles, Hernández hails from a Puerto Rican family, while Frohman grew up in a Jewish household in the Bronx hearing “everything going down in the neighborhood,” he said.
Looking to break into the New York scene after the University of Miami he got a tip from fellow saxphophonist Roger Rosenberg let him know that Tito Puente was looking for players who could come in and play the band’s book when a member of the orchestra was otherwise engaged.
He wasn’t planning on specializing in salsa and Latin jazz, but after subbing for Puente for a while he got the gig full time, working seven nights a week. He took every opportunity to get deeper into the music.
“We’d play opposite other bands and I’d listen to the flute player in the charanga,” Frohman said. “There’s no substitute for applying yourself.”
Now he’s a specialist in delivering punchy riffs that get dancers hopping, even if his boss wishes they’d stay seated.
Contact Andrew Gilbert at jazzscribe@aol.com.
SPANISH HARLEM ORCHESTRA’S SALSA NAVIDAD
When & where: 7 & 9 p.m. Thursday Dec. 19 at Kuumbwa Jazz Center, Santa Cruz; $ $23.50 – $64.10; www.kuumbwajazz.org/calendar; and 7:30 p.m. Saturday Dec. 21, & 2 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 22 at SFJazz Center’s Miner Auditorium, San Francisco; $30-$115; www.sfjazz.org/tickets/productions/24-25/spanish-harlem-orchestra/