Ralph Irizarry, who ranks among America’s best timbales players, has hands that seem large enough to be catcher’s mitts. His new band, Son Cafe, performed at SummerDance on Friday, and the group showed why he has enjoyed such a lengthy career in salsa and jazz.
This experience in showmanship goes back a few decades. Along with keeping his time-honored sound alive in front of New York audiences, Irizarry is also developing different combinations of Latin rhythms in his experimental jazz group, Timbalaye. With Irizarry’s recently formed Son Cafe, he brings new twists to the mambo without losing the dancers’ attention.
What was particularly remarkable about Son Cafe is that even though it is a relatively small group — six instrumentalists and two singers — Irizarry’s arrangements lent it the force of a much larger ensemble. Trumpeters Richie Viruet and Kevin Bryant sounded like a full horn section.
At the same time, the size of Son Cafe lent a flexibility that could have been lost in a big band. The group began with modern salsa, but seamlessly glided into an elemental rumba. That early Cuban idiom took the form of a drum-and-chant dialog among Irizarry, percussionist Roberto Rosario and vocalist Jorge Maldonado.
As a sonero, Maldonado’s singing was based on improvisation — much like a freestyle rapper. His quick-thinking lyrics about Chicago were impressive, but just as important was his delivery, always engaged with the group’s changing beats. Maldonado also offered a contrast to the quieter style of vocalist Elsa Ozuna.
Ozuna was presented as the heir to Celia Cruz, who died last summer. While she does not convey Cruz’s extroverted flash (who possibly could?), Ozuna clearly has the vocal range and some fine dance moves of her own. On Irizarry’s composition “El Vacio,” her deliberate pacing gradually moved to a quick tempo without losing the dark beauty of the ballad. Her duet with Maldonado on “Como Me E Insultado” made the most of their different styles.
Irizarry unleashed his own explosive solo at the concert’s climax. After Maldonado praised such legends as Tito Puente on the son montuno “Cuando Se Habla,” the leader threw all of his weight into a fusillade. His timbales, distinctively augmented with double cowbells and a cymbal, sounded like they could have been resonating throughout Grant Park.
