It isn't every day of the week that you get to see an artist credited with having helped invent an entire genre of music. Born in east Harlem in 1936, Eddie Palmieri served his apprenticeship as a member of Tito Rodriguez's mambo orchestra in the late 1950s. The following decade saw him strike out on his own, fusing various strands of Afro-Caribbean music with elements of R&B and jazz to create what is now known as Latin jazz. Always an innovator, Palmieri was the first bandleader to make extensive use of trombones and flutes, while his idiosyncratic piano playing owed as much to bebop pioneer Thelonious Monk as it did to Cuban legends such as Jesus Lopez and Tommy Garcia.
At the age of 66, and with six Grammy awards under his belt, Palmieri is showing no signs of slowing down. His innovative drive may not be what it was - new album La Perfecto II revisits tunes recorded 40 years ago - but the Palmieri live experience is as hot as ever.
In Manchester he kept the audience waiting for two hours before finally taking the stage. An unassuming figure with a beaming grin and a large cigar, he got the party started by laying down a lean piano groove. Super-slick arrangements and trance-like repetition of vocal phrases are obligatory for professional Latin dance bands. However, any notion that this was a run-of-the-mill outfit evaporated when Palmieri took his first solo. Taking a sudden, dissonant plunge into distinctly Monk-ish harmonic territory, he proceeded to churn up the keyboard with gleeful aggression. Broken, rampaging flourishes were juxtaposed with audacious multi-octave sweeps and barrages of fantastic-sounding chords that seemed full of all the wrong notes.
Palmieri's solos were greeted with delirious excitement, and they spurred the band on to greater intensity. With sweat dripping off the walls, some audience members did their best to show off their salsa dancing skills, but they were hampered by the sheer press of the crowd.
Last time Palmieri played Manchester, he claimed it was the best gig of his career. Judging by the reaction to this show, he just went one better.
