Issac Delgado på San Francisco Jazz Festival

"So ... what about those two concert sets, you ask. Well ... wow ... this was much more aggressive and exciting than the Monterey Jazz a month ago. When Issac Jr. tore into the piano tumbao to La temática I started to get the old timba adrenaline rush and when Issac followed it -- the encore -- with El malecón I closed my eyes and felt like I was back at El Morro in 1999 again. The show was also a lot more creative, with Issac improvising horn mambos. coros and pregones with effortless grace. The first set started out like Monterey, with the medley and Dile a Catalina, but quickly switched gears to extended, timbafied versions of songs from the full range of Issac's career, including a healthy assortment from the last two albums ... but with lots of aggessive new timba coros that the audience hungrily devoured.

Bimbo's hold 675 people and both (separate admission) shows were filled to capacity. The 2000s have been a brutally hostile economic environment for live music but Issac and his world-class promoter Elena Peña have made it look easy with a coast to coast string of mega-successful concerts.

The band had many changes ... all for the better in my opinion. SF was thrilled to finally hear the legendary Wickly Nogueras in person and he was rock solid on bongó, but an even more significant change was the addition of hardcore timba bassist Edward Magdariaga (Manolín, CTA, etc.). Papacho was brilliant as always, both as a conguero and as the leader of the rhythm section - during the pedales you could see him conveying the next bloque - as if by ESP - to the other drummers ... amazing! So, by this point, Issac's experimental multi-national rhythm section is again all Cuban except for Venezuelan timbalero Roberto Vilera. Vilera now has a MIDI kick drum pedal which sounds great. Each time I hear him, he's more and more in the timba groove and his solo brought the house down. I have only one, horribly unfair, criticism ... he's not Reinier Guerra. Add Reinier to this band and we'd have a reprise of the 1906 San Francisco fire on our hands."

Kjelde: Tom Erlich/ Timba.com