Showing posts with label Gato Barbieri. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gato Barbieri. Show all posts

Thursday, January 26, 2023

Gato Barbieri - Club Jamaica (Buenos Aires) En Vivo 1961

Styles: Saxophone Jazz
Year: 2022
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 41:47
Size: 96,2 MB
Art: Front

(7:25) 1. Impressions
(7:07) 2. Round Midnight
(7:11) 3. Village Blues
(7:32) 4. My Shining Hour
(7:47) 5. You Say You Care
(4:43) 6. What Is This Thing Called Love

He began playing tenor with his own band in the late 50s and moved to Rome with his Italian born first wife Michelle in 1962, where he began collaborating with Cherry. The two recorded two albums for Blue Note, “Complete Communion.” and “Symphony for Improvisers,” which are considered classics of free group improvisations. Barbieri launched his career as a leader with the Latin flavored “The Third World,” in 1969, and later parlayed his Grammy winning “Last Tango In Paris” success into a career as a film composer, scoring a dozen international films over the years in Europe, South America and the United States.

From 1976 through 1979, Barbieri released four popular albums on A&M Records, the label owned by trumpet great Herb Alpert. “The Shadow of the Cat,” is a reunion of sorts for the two, with Alpert playing trumpet and trumpet solos on three songs.

Barbieri officially took up the clarinet at age 12 when he heard Charlie Parker’s “Now’s The Time,” and even as he continued private music lessons in Buenos Aires, he was playing his first professional gigs with Lalo Schifrin’s orchestra. “During that time, Juan Peron was in power”, he recalls. “We weren’t allowed to play all jazz; we had to include some traditional music, too. So we played tango and other things like carnavalito.” In Buenos Aires, Barbieri also had the opportunity to perform with visiting musicians like Cuban mambo king Perez Prado, Coleman Hawkins, Herbie Mann, Dizzy Gillespie, and João Gilberto.

Barbieri credits his learning of musical discipline to his years working with Don Cherry while living in Europe. While collaborating with Cherry in the mid ‘60’s, he also recorded with American expatriate Steve Lacy and South African pianist Abdullah Ibrahim. Other associations during Barbieri’s free jazz days included time with Charlie Haden, Carla Bley and the Jazz Composer’s Orchestra, as well as dates with Stanley Clarke, Airto Moreira, Chico O’Farrell, and Lonnie Liston Smith.

He had recorded a handful of albums on the Flying Dutchman label in the early 70s and then signed with Impulse where he recorded his classic Chapter Series “Latin America ,” “Hasta Siempre,” “ Viva Emiliano Zapata,” and “Alive in New York .” While at Impulse, “Last Tango”hit, and by the mid-70s, his coarse, wailing tone began to mellow with ballads like “What A Difference A Day Makes” (known to Barbieri as the vintage bolero “Cuando Vuelva a tu Lado”) and Carlos Santana’s “Europa.” Barbieri’s A&M recordings of the late ‘70’s, featured this softer jazz approach, but early 80s dates like the live “Gato…Para Los Amigos,” had a more intense, rock influenced South American sound.

After many years of limited musical activity due to the passing of his first wife Michelle (also his closest musical confidant and manager) and his own triple bypass surgery six weeks later, Barbieri returned stronger than ever with the 1997 Columbia offering “Que Pasa,” the fourth highest selling Contemporary Jazz album of the year.

There have been several recent highlights in Gato’s life: In July of 2003, Long Island University and WLIU combined to give Gato a Lifetime Achievement Award. In September of the same year, Boston Symphony Orchestra’s Tanglewood Jazz Festival headlined Gato Barbieri at the Ozawa Concert Hall. The performance was broadcast live by Boston’s WBGH and New York ’s WBGO; it was the beginning of the fledgling NPR station network as the concert was simulcast over eight stations from New England to Pennsylvania to Chicago .

The 2004 Puerto Rican Heineken Jazz Festival featured Gato as the 2004 Honoree. Late in 2004, Gato was honored by his homeland of Argentina when the Argentine Ambassador presented him with a Lifetime Achievement Award at a special function at the Argentine Consulate in New York City.

Also in 2004, Universal Music released four new compilation CD’s in their world renown “20th Century Masters” series: Sarah Vaughan, Charlie Parker, Carmen McRae, and Gato Barbieri. This association with other jazz icons only serves to once again confirm Barbieri’s legendary status both within the music business community and to the entire world. In 2009 Barbieri released "In Search of the Mystery." Gato's new album "Encounter" will be released in late 2010, featuring Gato Barbieri, Carlos Franzetti, David Finck and Nestor Astorita. https://www.allaboutjazz.com/musicians/gato-barbieri

Club Jamaica (Buenos Aires) En Vivo 1961

Saturday, August 27, 2022

Gato Barbieri - Che Corazon

Styles: Saxophone Jazz
Year: 1999
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 57:06
Size: 132,1 MB
Art: Front

(0:37)  1. Introduction
(5:01)  2. Cristiano
(5:05)  3. I Want You
(4:02)  4. Seven Servants
(5:24)  5. Blue Eyes
(5:34)  6. Eclipse
(4:31)  7. 1812
(4:41)  8. The Woman On The Lake
(5:49)  9. Rosa
(3:50) 10. Sweet Glenda
(5:00) 11. Encounter
(4:15) 12. Auld Lang Syne
(3:12) 13. Finale

When Gato Barbieri re-emerged on Columbia in 1997 after a long hiatus from recording, long-time followers wondered whether he would record straight-ahead jazz or embrace the type of lush pop-jazz he had recorded for A&M in the late 1970's. The distinctive tenor saxman opted to go the commercial route, but he kept his dignity intact. 1997's Que Pasa picked up where Barbieri's A&M output left off, and he has a very similar CD in Che Corazon. With guitarist Chuck Loeb producing, he delivers another album of sleek, romantic mood music. To be sure, pop-jazz instrumentals like "Blue Eyes," "Sweet Glenda" and "The Woman on the Lake" aren¹t in a class with Barbieri's challenging, often brilliant post-bop and avant-garde jazz of the 1960s and early 1970s. But they're tastefully done, and they demonstrate that commercial mood music doesn't have to be elevator music. You can think of Che Corazon as "smooth jazz with a brain."~ AAJ Staff https://www.allaboutjazz.com/che-corazon-gato-barbieri-columbia-records-review-by-aaj-staff.php

Personnel: Gato Barbieri (tenor saxophone); Chuck Loeb (conductor, guitar); Frank McComb (vocals); Mitchel Forman, Bill O'Connell (piano); Mike Ricchiuti (keyboards); Will Lee, Ron Jenkins, Mark Egan, Mario Rodriguez, John Beale (bass); Lionel Cordew, Wolfgang Haffner, Robbie Gonzalez, Dave Rataczek (drums); David Charles, Sam Figueroa, Richie Flores (percussion); Carmen Cuesta, Peter Valentine (background vocals).

Che Corazon

Friday, August 6, 2021

Oliver Nelson - Swiss Suite

Styles: Saxophone Jazz
Year: 2014
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 44:45
Size: 102,9 MB
Art: Front

(26:51)  1. Swiss Suite
( 8:38)  2. Stolen Moments
( 3:15)  3. Black, Brown & Beautiful
( 5:59)  4. Blues & The Abstract Truth

Recorded at the 1971 Montreux Jazz Festival, this big-band outing features a mostly all-star band and altoist Oliver Nelson (who wrote all of the arrangements and compositions) and trumpeter Danny Moore on remakes of "Stolen Moments," "Black, Brown & Beautiful" and "Blues and the Abstract Truth." However it is the nearly 27-minute "Swiss Suite" that dominates this album and although tenorman Gato Barbieri has a couple of raging solos, it is a five-minute segment when guest altoist Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson plays the blues that is most memorable. Vinson's classic spot alone is worth the price of this hard-to-find LP. ~ Scott Yanow https://www.allmusic.com/album/swiss-suite-mw0000739505

Personnel:  Oliver Nelson - alto saxophone, arranger, conductor; Charles Tolliver - trumpet, flugelhorn; Danny Moore, Richie Cole, Bernt Stean, Harry Beckett - trumpet; Buddy Baker, Bertil Strandberg, Donald Beightol, C.J. Shilby, Monte Holz, John Thomas - trombone; Jim Nissen - bass trombone; Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson, Jesper Thilo, Ozren Depolo - alto saxophone; Gato Barbieri, Michael Urbaniak, Bob Sydor - tenor saxophone; Steve Stevenson - baritone saxophone; Stanley Cowell - piano; Victor Gaskin, Hugo Rasmussen - bass; Bernard Purdie- drums; Bosko Petrovic - drums, vibraphone, tarabooka; Na Na - berimbau; Sonny Morgan - congas

Swiss Suite

Monday, January 9, 2017

Gato Barbieri - Under Fire

Bitrate: MP3@320K/s
Time: 35:47
Size: 81.9 MB
Styles: Latin jazz
Year: 1971/2016
Art: Front

[9:08] 1. El Parana
[4:51] 2. Yo Le Canto A La Luna
[3:51] 3. Antonico
[9:35] 4. Maria Domingas
[8:20] 5. El Sertao

Under Fire is Gato Barbieri in his early-'70s prime, when the Argentinean tenorman's transition from the avant-garde to exploring his South American continental routes still hadn't passed beyond the pale into flaccid fusion. He's joined by a pretty stellar band: his regular pianist Lonnie Liston Smith (before he fuzaked out), Airto Moreira and James Mtume on drums and percussion, the veteran Roy Haynes guesting on "El Parana," a young John Abercrombie on guitar and Stanley Clarke in his young lion-of-acoustic-bass phase.

Barbieri floats in the background of "El Parana" before kicking into the song proper at an accelerated tempo. More than improvising per se, his trademark was the emotionally charged sonic stamp he put on the melody (check the intro to the ballad "Yo Le Canto a la Luna," where Barbieri sounds like he's aiming to blow down walls) that made clichés like "Latin passion and fire" sound like, well, the real deal. It also provides a good counterpoint to the exuberant playing of the group -- Smith's solo shows the impact of his years with Pharoah Sanders, but it's Clarke and the rhythm section that really drive the piece while Abercrombie tosses in fills here and there.

"Antonico" features double-tracked Barbieri and the strongest improvisation (so far) at the end, while Brazilian songwriter Jorge Ben's "Maria Domingas" fades in with a full head of steam thanks to Abercrombie and Clarke dueling over Moreira and Mtume. Barbieri's echoed yelps give way to a deeply lyrical sax melody -- he does a lot of similar dynamic shifts here -- before Abercrombie's guitar comps re-start the up-tempo with Clarke effortlessly loping on as the octave-leaping anchor for Barbieri's searing statement of the theme. "El Sertao" opens with Barbieri squeaks over Smith's echoed Fender Rhodes trills, a Clarke foundation riff, and Abercrombie's comps before Barbieri enters full-force. The music stays light and buoyant before another downtempo shift builds to a climatic coda with Clarke shining.

Even the longer pieces are over before you know it so, although Under Fire doesn't quite match the charged intensity of Fenix or El Pampero, it leaves you wishing for two things. First, that there were outtakes to include here because you never come close to getting tired of the music -- double the music would mean double the fun. And what a shame that Carlos Santana, who was just entering his Devadip phase, never recorded with Barbieri at this point in their careers because that combination had the potential to create some pretty incredible music. ~Don Snowden

Under Fire

Thursday, April 7, 2016

Gato Barbieri - Ruby, Ruby

Styles: Saxophone Jazz, Jazz Fusion
Year: 1977
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 43:48
Size: 100,6 MB
Art: Front

(6:30)  1. Ruby
(5:26)  2. Nostalgia
(5:03)  3. Latin Reaction
(5:47)  4. Ngiculela/Es Una Historia/I Am Singing
(5:54)  5. Sunride
(4:45)  6. Adios
(5:49)  7. Blue Angel
(4:32)  8. Midnight Tango

Leandro Barbieri (28 November 1932 – 2 April 2016), known as Gato Barbieri (Spanish for "the cat" Barbieri), was an Argentine jazz tenor saxophonist and composer who rose to fame during the free jazz movement in the 1960s and is known for his Latin jazz recordings of the 1970s.  

Born to a family of musicians, Barbieri began playing music after hearing Charlie Parker's "Now's the Time". He played the clarinet and later the alto saxophone while performing with the Argentinean pianist Lalo Schifrin in the late 1950s. By the early 1960s, while playing in Rome, he also worked with the trumpeter Don Cherry. By now influenced by John Coltrane's late recordings, as well as those from other free jazz saxophonists such as Albert Ayler and Pharoah Sanders, he began to develop the warm and gritty tone with which he is associated. In the late 1960s, he was fusing music from South America into his playing and contributed to multi-artist projects like Charlie Haden's Liberation Music Orchestra and Carla Bley's Escalator Over The Hill. His score for Bernardo Bertolucci's film Last Tango in Paris earned him a Grammy Award and led to a record deal with Impulse! Records. By the mid-70s, he was recording for A&M Records and moved his music towards soul-jazz and jazz-pop. Caliente! (1976) included his best known song, a rendition of Carlos Santana's "Europa". The follow-up album, Ruby Ruby (1977) were both produced by fellow musician and label co-founder, Herb Alpert. Although he continued to record and perform well into the 1980s, the death of his wife Michelle led him to withdraw from the public arena. He returned to recording and performing in the late 1990s with the soundtrack for the film Seven Servants by Daryush Shokof (1996). The album Qué Pasa (1997) moved more into the style of smooth jazz. Barbieri received the UNICEF Award at the Argentinian Consulate in November 2009. He died on 2 April 2016 in New York City. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gato_Barbieri

Charming and romantic fit the description of Gato Barbieri and the work he presents here, the album Ruby, Ruby. The production of the record, mastered and engineered handsomely by Herb Alpert, is very lush and beautiful to a lasting degree. Barbieri turns his first song, "Ruby," from an early-on haunting love ballad to an appealing and gripping all-out Latin jam session. This theme happens to find itself playing roles several times over throughout the record. The musicianship explored is captivating and adventurous, taking the listener on a passionate journey to whatever part of the soul he or she wishes to find or dares to pursue. A soaring sound at times, with Barbieri's splendid, racing saxophone melody lines. "Nostalgia" brings the delicate and eloquent guitar work of Lee Ritenour, who also takes part in the creation of "Sunride" and bits of "Ruby." As with most jazz records, percussion is responsible for playing a key role in the inception of the groove and depth of the material. Because of this album's Latin context, Barbieri does a wonderful job inspiring his friends in the rhythm section to come to life. Joe Clayton plays the textured conga on "Latin Reaction," and Lenny White leads a band of fellow passionate drummers, including Paulina da Costa, Steve Gadd, Steve Jordan, and Bernard Purdie. The entire atmosphere of the record changes smoothly in texture and tempo, drifting like a channeling stream from subdued and slow to rampant and passionately loud. Certainly, Barbieri intended it to be a delight of the first degree in the Latin scene, and one listen should win the hearts and minds of the listener. Conjuring up romance and scenes of a starry night in Latin America, this music is the soul of Latin music at its peak in the late '70s. A soothing and ethereal delight, even considering its only weakness: the lack of words and lyrics.~Shawn M.Haney http://www.allmusic.com/album/ruby-ruby-mw0000654493

Personnel: Gato Barbieri (tenor saxophone); David Spinozza, Joe Caro (guitar); Eddy Martinez (keyboards); Gary King (bass guitar); Lenny White (drums); Angel "Cachete" Maldonado (percussion).

Additional personnel: Lee Ritenour (guitar); Herb Alpert, Jon Faddis, Alan Rubin, Lew Soloff, Marvin Stamm (trumpet); Tom "Bones" Malone, John Gale (French horn); David Taylor , Paul Faulise (trombone); Don Grolnick (organ); Ian Underwood (synthesizer); Eddie Guagua (bass guitar); Steve Gadd (drums); Joe Clayton (conga drum); Paulinho Da Costa, Portinho (percussion); Nadien.

R.I.P.
Born: 28-11-1932/Died: 02-4-2016

Ruby, Ruby

Thursday, October 30, 2014

Gato Barbieri - New York Meeting (Feat. Carlos Franzetti, David Finck & Nestor Astarita)

Size: 116,5 MB
Time: 49:59
File: MP3 @ 320K/s
Released: 2010
Styles: Jazz
Art: Front & Back

01. Equinox (6:57)
02. It's Over (5:48)
03. Preparense (8:12)
04. Straight No Chaser (6:12)
05. Blue In Green (6:09)
06. Someday My Prince Will Come (7:24)
07. So What (9:15)

Gato Barbieri is the second Argentine musician to make a significant impact upon modern jazz -- the first being Lalo Schifrin, in whose band Barbieri played. His story has been that of an elongated zigzag odyssey between his homeland and North America. He started out playing to traditional Latin rhythms in his early years, turning his back on his heritage to explore the jazz avant-garde in the '60s, reverting to South American influences in the early '70s, playing pop and fusion in the late '70s, only to go back and forth again in the '80s. North American audiences first heard Barbieri when he was a wild bull, sporting a coarse, wailing John Coltrane/Pharoah Sanders-influenced tone. Yet by the mid-'70s, his approach and tone began to mellow somewhat in accordance with ballads like "What a Diff'rence a Day Makes" (which he always knew as the vintage bolero "Cuando Vuelva a Tu Lado") and Carlos Santana's "Europa." Still, regardless of the idiom in which he works, the warm-blooded Barbieri has always been one of the most overtly emotional tenor sax soloists on record, occasionally driving the voltage ever higher with impulsive vocal cheerleading.

Though Barbieri's family included several musicians, he did not take up an instrument until the age of 12 when a hearing of Charlie Parker's "Now's the Time" encouraged him to study the clarinet. Upon moving to Buenos Aires in 1947, he continued private music lessons, picked up the alto sax, and by 1953 had become a prominent national musician through exposure in the Schifrin orchestra. Later in the '50s, Barbieri started leading his own groups, switching to tenor sax. After moving to Rome in 1962 with his Italian-born wife, he met Don Cherry in Paris the following year and, upon joining his group, became heavily absorbed in the jazz avant-garde. Barbieri also played with Mike Mantler's Jazz Composers' Orchestra in the late '60s; you can hear his fierce tone unleashed in the "Hotel Overture" of Carla Bley's epic work "Escalator Over the Hill."

Yet after the turn of the next decade, Barbieri experienced a slow change of heart and began to reincorporate and introduce South American melodies, instruments, harmonies, textures, and rhythm patterns into his music. Albums such as the live El Pampero on Flying Dutchman and the four-part Chapter series on Impulse -- the latter of which explored Brazilian and Afro-Cuban rhythms and textures, as well as Argentine -- brought Barbieri plenty of acclaim in the jazz world and gained him a following on American college campuses.

However, it was a commercial accident, his sensuous theme and score for the controversial film Last Tango in Paris in 1972, that made Barbieri an international star and a draw at festivals in Montreux, Newport, Bologna, and other locales. A contract with A&M in the U.S. led to a series of softer pop/jazz albums in the late '70s, including the brisk-selling Caliente! He returned to a more intense, rock-influenced, South American-grounded sound in 1981 with the live Gato...Para los Amigos under the aegis of producer Teo Macero, before doubling back to pop/jazz on Apasionado. Yet his profile in the U.S. was diminished later in the decade in the wake of the buttoned-down neo-bop movement.

Beset by triple-bypass surgery and bereavement over the death of his wife, Michelle, who was his closest musical confidant, Barbieri was inactive through much of the 1990s. But he returned to action in 1997, playing with most of his impassioned intensity, if limited in ideas, at the Playboy Jazz Festival in Los Angeles and recording a somewhat bland album, Que Pasa, for Columbia. Che Corazon followed in 1999.

As the 21st Century opened, Barbieri saw a steady stream of collections and reissues of his work appear. A new album, Shadow of the Cat, appeared from Peak Records in 2002. ~Biography by Richard S. Ginell

New York Meeting

Wednesday, August 27, 2014

Gato Barbieri - Passion And Fire

Bitrate: 320K/s
Time: 37:45
Size: 86.4 MB
Styles: Latin jazz, Saxophone jazz
Year: 1994/2007
Art: Front

[5:56] 1. I Want You
[4:00] 2. Fiesta
[4:11] 3. Europa (Earth's Cry, Heaven's Smile)
[3:41] 4. Poinciana (Song Of The Tree)
[3:16] 5. Theme From Firepower
[6:11] 6. She Is Michelle
[3:57] 7. Ruby
[6:30] 8. Speak Low

Argentine saxophonist Gato Barbieri splashed into the European-American avant garde jazz scene in the mid 1960s. His sax playing is unmistakeable, wild and full. He found his voice bringing the percussion and rhythms of South America into his music; while his focus was more cultural than spiritual, his association with keyboardist Lonnie Liston Smith brought his music into the cauldron of musical ferment centered around Pharoah Sanders. It should be suggested that the Indian (native American, that is) and Afro-Brazilian rhythms infused into Gato Barbieri's music all had their roots in indigenous religion.

Barbieri has had several distinct phases in his career: first, as an avant gardist (mid-1960s); second--his most "kozmigroov" period if you will--incorporating "third world" roots, culture, spirituality, and politics (late '60s/early '70s); third as a reasonably succesful pop jazz artist (late '70s/early '80s); fourth as an artist struggling to reestablish an identity (1980s); and finally, in 1997, a return to pop jazz.

David Spinozza, Eric Gale, Jeff Layton, Greg Poree, Joe Beck, Lance Quinn, Lee Ritenour , Wah-Wah Watson (guitar); Don Grolnick (piano, keyboards, synthesizer); Jimmy Maelen (piano, percussion); John Barnes, Eddie Martinez, Richard Tee, Pat Rebillot (keyboards); Lenny White, Leon "Ndugu" Chancler, Bernard "Pretty" Purdie, Billy Cobham, Allan Schwartzberg (drums); Bill Summers (congas, percussion); Armando Peraza (bongos); José Chepitó Areas (timbales); Miguel Valdez, Mtume, Paulinho Da Costa, Ralph MacDonald, Angel "Cachete" Maldonado (percussion).

Passion And Fire

Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Gato Barbieri - The Shadow of the Cat

Styles: Saxophone Jazz
Year: 2002
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 58:23
Size: 130,4 MB
Art: Front

(5:00)  1. El Chico
(5:18)  2. The Shadow of the Cat
(5:12)  3. Last Kiss
(4:36)  4. If I Was Your Woman
(5:03)  5. Tierra del Fuego (Land of Fire)
(5:18)  6. Beautiful Walk
(4:49)  7. Ai Ai Ai Ai
(5:05)  8. Bliss
(4:37)  9. Para Todos (For Everyone)
(4:01) 10. Blue Habanera
(4:41) 11. Last Tango (Theme From Last Tango in Paris)
(4:36) 12. Si Tu Me Quisieras (If I Was Your Woman)

According to the press biography disseminated with advance copies of Gato Barbieri's Peak Records debut, The Shadow of the Cat, he was nearing 70 at the time of this release (previous published accounts would have put him at only 67) and this is the 50th album on which he is either featured or is the leader. One cannot, then, reasonably expect the old cat to have learned new tricks. Nor has his new label required him to; the company, run by contemporary jazz guitarist Russ Freeman, specializes in a melodic, commercial style of jazz. Producer Jason Miles (whose previous clients include Miles Davis and Luther Vandross) seems to have aimed at re-creating the sound of Barbieri's mid-'70s albums for A&M Records, even to the point of enlisting trumpeter Herb Alpert (the "A" in A&M) as a prominent guest ("Para Todos [For Everyone]" finds Barbieri and Alpert dueling pleasantly) and having Barbieri recut his signature tune, "Last Tango (Theme From Last Tango in Paris)." A bevy of other smooth jazz artists also sit in, including the company head, of course, along with some percussionists enlisted to give the album the appropriate Latin flavor. Buoyed by such support, Barbieri sounds good, soloing warmly throughout the disc, and maybe that's the real story here that, at some point in his late sixties, the veteran musician, bedeviled by health and emotional problems for much of the 1990s, is back to playing in his most appealing style in the 21st century. ~ William Ruhlmann   
http://www.allmusic.com/album/the-shadow-of-the-cat-mw0000225929

Personnel: Gato Barbieri (vocals, tenor saxophone); Lisa Fischer, Cassandra Reed (vocals, background vocals); Jeff Mironov, Russ Freeman , Peter White (guitar); Dal Romeo Lowe, Romero Lubambo (acoustic guitar); Dean Brown (electric guitar); Jason Miles (strings, brass, piano, keyboards, synthesizer, drums, percussion, programming, drum programming, percussion programming); Herb Alpert, Barry Danielian (trumpet); Ozzie Melendez (trombone); Oscar Hernandez (piano, electric piano); Richie Morales (drums, percussion); Steve Wolf (drums, percussion programming); Vinnie Colaiuta (drums); Sheila E. (congas, percussion); Marc Quiñones, Cyro Baptista (percussion).