The three musicians at the heart of the band La Lucha all hail from different parts of the world – Colombia, Mexico & United States. They met studying music at USF six years ago and launched a band that mixes originals, Latin rhythms and jazz interpretations of popular songs.
Along the way, Mark Feinman, the U.S. born drummer, Alejandro Arenas, a bassist from Colombia, and John O’Leary, a pianist born in Mexico, have played in lots of other bands, doing jazz, rock, Latin music and classical.
Saturday night at the Palladium the three best friends, along with singer Jun Bustamante and guest sax player Austin Vickrey, will celebrate the release of their new CD, simply titled La Lucha.
“We’ll do some originals, a whole bunch of pop songs redone in jazz style and some traditional Latin music – even a salsa arrangement of Stella By Starlight,” Mark Feinman told me, as the band broke from rehearsal Tuesday.
Jazz greats like Miles Davis and John Coltrane often worked with the pop music of their day as the basis for their jazz excursions. That idea provided inspired La Lucha.
“Like Miles and Coltrane, we wanted to do some music from our own generation,’ Alejandro said.
La Lucha was featured in TBT recently and here’s what they said about the band:
“Pianist John O’Leary, bassist Alejandro Arenas and drummer Mark Feinman have all toured and performed at jazz festivals around the world, including events in Italy and France. Their music puts unique twists on non-jazzy songs — their 2009 album A Cup of Fuzzy Water features smooth covers of David Bowie’s Space Oddity, Britney Spears’ Toxic and Deftones’ Change (In The House of Flies); and they were recently commissioned by American Stage to perform jazz versions of songs from The Rocky Horror Show.”
For their Palladium show, the band will be doing some tunes from their first CD – A Cup of Fuzzy Water – and lots from the new CD. Their new disc was partially funded by a mini-grant from Hampton Arts Management, run by local creative kingpin, Hampton Dohrman.
You can see and hear this hot young band on Saturday night at the Side Door Cabaret. You can probably also corner Hampton and see if he’ll bankroll your next project. I’m told the guy is awash in cash.
Showtime is 8 p.m. For tickets and more details visit www.mypalladium.org or call 727 822-3590.
And don’t miss the great blues guitarists, Sarasota Slim and his band on Friday night and the 18-piece Helios Jazz Orchestra on Sunday, doing soundrack music from spy films and TV shows. It’s another great weekend of Side Door Summer at the Palladium.
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