Poncho Sanchez Headlines San Pedro Music Festival

By Garrick Rawlings

Headlining the third annual San Pedro Music Festival at The Warner Grand Theatre this Sunday (9/10/23) is LA’s own conguero master, Poncho Sanchez with his septet. Since the mid-1970s, Sanchez has been one of the most influential percussionists in jazz, he is congruently a legendary band leader and a highly sought-after sideman, whose continuing accomplishments only add to his status as a seminal figure in advancing Latin music and jazz in general. He instinctively developed an all-inclusive blended signature style of Caribbean, Afro-Latin, South American, soul, funk and straight-ahead jazz, and surrounds himself with a band full of veteran master instrumentalists.

Sanchez recently released his first studio album in eight years, Trane’s Delight (Concord), a tribute to the man who loomed large as an early influence as well as today, pioneering jazz saxophonist John Coltrane. In fact, the 1962 album Coltrane (Impulse) was the first album Sanchez purchased with his own money; “I’ve always loved John Coltrane,” Sanchez says, “ever since I was a kid and first learned about jazz. I’ve recorded tributes to a lot of my heroes in life –Mongo Santamaria, Tito Puente, Cal Tjader – so I thought it was definitely time to do a tribute to the great John Coltrane.” Sanchez signed with his label, Concord, a highly regarded and eclectic label with a stable of amazing true artists, for a one-album deal in 1982, now 30 + years later, he’s released over 30 albums/collection on Concord – unheard of in this day and age!

Born in Laredo, Texas, the youngest of eleven children, Sanchez was raised in Norwalk, California and attended Cerritos College. Sanchez now resides up in the hills of Whittier, CA where I caught up with him on the phone while he was in his garage loading up his gear for a fishing trip.

RLn: Calling to talk to you about your gig at the Warner Grand Theatre in San Pedro this weekend and congratulations on your new album [Trane’s Delight].

Sanchez: “Yeah, thank you for that. Of course I love Trane just as much as anybody else, it was just time to do a tribute to him. It’s not all Trane’s music, Francisco Torres and myself wrote “Trane’s Delight” and we did [Coltrane songs] “Liberia” and “Giant Steps” and all that [including “Blue Train,” “The Feeling of Jazz”] and we got nominated for a Grammy, we didn’t win but we got nominated. This band has been nominated 10 times for Grammys and we won two, so we’re doing pretty good.

RLn: I know you won the Grammy for Latin Soul [Best Latin Jazz Performance (2000)], which was the second?

Sanchez: “After Latin Soul, the big one I got was a Latin Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award [2012], so I have two Grammy’s here at home one for the record and one for the lifetime which was really special man ‘cause you only get one of those, you know what I’m sayin’?”

RLn: I do, indeed! Who is in the band you’ll be bringing to the Warner Grand?

Sanchez: “Same as always, I’ve had the same setup for 40 years as far as instrumentation, personnel-wise, my long-time musical director and arranger Francisco Torres is on trombone, Ron Blake on trumpet and flugelhorn, Tom Luer plays tenor sax, alto sax and flute, those are my three horn players. The rhythm section consists of Andy Langham on piano, Ross Schodek on bass, Jose Perez on timbales, Giancarlo Anderson on bongos and percussion and of course myself on conga and vocals and the one I never leave out is Jimmy Aparicio, he’s been our sound guy now for about two and a half years now, he replaced Larry Sanchez who was my sound guy for 32 years and then he got into a car accident and can’t lift stuff anymore. For 35 [+] years now we always travel and play with our own sound guy, he’s always with the band.

RLn: What can the festival crowd look forward to in regards to your show and setlist?

Sanchez: “I think we’re the last band and we gonna do our thing! I think we’re on for 45 minutes. I’m blessed because in our traveling book we have over 150 tunes and I have another set of books here at home with another 150 tunes so we’ve got plenty to pick from – a 45-minute set, man that is like five tunes you know! So, of course we’ll do something off the new Trane’s Delight record, maybe a Poncho Sanchez medley and all that. I always do a couple of hot salsa numbers, I usually end the set with a salsa number, so yeah, we’ll do some of the new and some of the old.

RLn: Is that how you do it on the road since you have so much material to choose from, improvise the set list show to show?

Sanchez: “Yeah, I never make a set list until I get there. Francisco, the musical director and me, we sit there and it takes us three minutes and we come up with the set. He just texts the list to everyone’s phone then they get the books out and pull out the charts and then after they’re done they put the charts back in place. Now, even a step further, I think almost all the guys in the band, they all have it on their iPad and they just pull up their charts on the pad. Everything’s different, ya know what I mean? I’ve been doing this a looong time man, actually, it’s great because it makes it easier for the guys, our sound man Jim Aparicio would take the music books with us all the time for the whole band and they’re in a big case with wheels on it and now they’ve transferred it to the iPads.”

Jazz titan, Poncho Sanchez last performed in San Pedro in November 2008 at the old 7th Street Chophouse and four years prior at the Taste in San Pedro.

RLn: Have you ever performed at the Warner Grand before?

Sanchez: “I don’t think so, it’s been a while since we’ve played in Pedro. We used to play all those boat cruises that leave from San Pedro but I can’t remember ever playing there at the theatre so I’m excited to check it out! For us, the venue doesn’t matter, we love to play wherever we get a gig, we’ve played Carnegie Hall, we’ve played football stadiums, we’ve played small concert halls, all the jazz clubs from Tokyo to here, and all over the world. As a matter of fact, I’m going to be 72 years old in October. I’ve been in a band a long time, maybe 42 years, and now I am just doing the gigs I want to do. Of course, this is a home spot so I told my management yeah I’ll do this festival, I just gotta drive over to the place – play, eat, hang out, drink a couple of beers and go home, I like that! We just did Catalina Bar & Grill for three nights in Hollywood, I’m trying not to fly too much anymore although in two weeks we’re flying up to Berkley to play at the Freight & Salvage club but that’s just an hour flight. I cut out all the New York stuff and going to Japan and Thailand and Africa.”

RLn: It sounds like a well-oiled machine and you’ve got it down to a science.

Sanchez: “We just played 23 nights and the band hits hard, when it’s time to hit, you’re gonna see the band is ON! So we’re definitely going to do our thing and I want you to know we have music for everybody, the whole family and all types of people, that’s what I’m proud of, we can play straight-up jazz tunes, we can do Latin-jazz tunes, we can play some great salsa dance numbers and I love all the old soul music – James Brown stuff too. I like to mix it up and with that you can almost touch anybody, ya know what I mean?