Poncho Sanchez on Latin Grammy, Bay Area, Yoshi’s

This blog contains audio clips of my conversation with last year’s Latin Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award recipient, covering his Latin Grammy nomination, his next Latin Jazz album, and Latin music in the SF Bay Area.

Latin Grammy Nomination for “Live in Hollywood”

There are a couple of interesting facts that surround Poncho’s 9th nomination for a Grammy/Latin Grammy award. Of the 9 nominations, the only one that has won the Grammy was “Latin Soul” (1999) in 2000, and it was a “live” album, partly recorded in Yoshi’s in Oakland.

The competition for Best Latin Jazz Album is strong, but one of the competitors is this year’s Grammy award winner in that category; Clare Fischer’s “Ritmo”. Clare was a close collaborator with Cal Tjader and very influential in Poncho’s early career in Latin Jazz.

A couple of interesting facts associated with the Latin Grammy nominations for Fischer’s “Ritmo” and Sanchez’s “Live in Hollywood” are that Poncho also participated in “Ritmo” in the song “San Francisco P.M.”, and one of Clare’s classic songs, “Morning”, is included in Poncho’s album.

Here is an audio clip of Poncho Sanchez discussing Clare Fischer’s influence in his career:

Next Poncho Sanchez Album: Tribute to John Coltrane

Poncho Sanchez is already working on his next Latin Jazz project, which will be a tribute to John Coltrane. I mentioned my recent review of Omar Sosa’s “Eggun“, a tribute to Miles Davis’ “Kind of Blue”, where Coltrane participated. Poncho is starting to perform some of the new material in preparation for a possible recording date around February 2014.

Here is an audio clip of Poncho talking about his new Latin Jazz album and the possible participation of Ravi Coltrane (John’s son) in the album:

Latin Music in San Francisco Bay Area

I brought the topic of the evolution of Latin Music in the Bay Area as it was fresh in my memory from the recent review of “Salsa de la Bahia“, a double-CD produced by San Francisco Bay Area based trombonist Wayne Wallace. Bay Area resident Cal Tjader was part of that Latin music evolution, and included his then young conga player Poncho Sanchez.

Even though Tjader’s band was based in the Bay Area, Poncho Sanchez never relocated from LA to San Francisco. He recounts who he commuted to the Bay Area to play with Cal Tjader, paying $24 cash at the LA airport to get one of the hourly flights to SF. Even though some of the Bay Area musicians resented that Tjader hired a guy from LA instead of a Bay Area local percussionist, Sanchez recalls that John Santos was one of the first to give him a warm welcome to the area.

Here is another audio clip where Poncho recalls the clubs he played with Cal Tjader in the 70’s, some of the Bay Area musicians he met, and other anecdotes of the Latin music scene of that time:

Performances at Yoshi’s San Francisco this Weekend

Parting from the premise that audience in different places and cities have some unique characteristics, I asked Poncho what he felt was a unique characteristic of the San Francisco Bay Area audience. “I think the people of the Bay Area are a bit more knowledgeable about Latin music than some of the other audiences”.

The material that Poncho Sanchez will be playing at Yoshi’s this weekend is, as always, handpicked and will include some of the new material for his next album, as well as some of his classics that people always ask him to play.

Here is an audio clip of Poncho talking about his performance this weekend at Yoshi’s:

Poncho Sanchez and his Latin Jazz Band will be performing at Yoshi’s San Francisco this Friday, November 8th and Saturday November 9th. You can get information about show times and tickets at: Yoshi’s website For other Poncho Sanchez performances in other cities, you can visit: Poncho Sanchez’s website Enjoy the show!