Spartan Daily - Serving San Jose State University since 1934

The San Jose State University Latin Jazz Ensemble is scheduled to perform a reunion concert tonight in the Music building Concert Hall at 7:30 p.m.

The performance will reunite former members of the band with current players.

Daniel Sabanovich, a music professor and director of the jazz ensemble, said he is expecting about 30 players to perform salsa and a variety of instrumentals, vocals and rhythms.

"It's going to be kind of a magical night to get everybody together and to put all this music together," he said. "Some people will not have met until that day, but when you are a good musician, people can come together like that and make great music because music is a universal language."

He said some of the ensemble's best players from the last 24 years would gather at the concert and play together. In addition to the current players, there will be returning musicians that recently graduated and others who attended SJSU in the 1970s.

Chip Boaz, a bass player who graduated from SJSU in 1993, said he is looking forward to reuniting with old friends from the ensemble.

Boaz, who played in the band for two years while at SJSU and majored in music, now plays in a Bay Area band called Orchester America. He also works with different music groups in San Francisco and is a music director at Sir Francis Drake High School in San Anselmo.

"I had a lot of good friends in the ensemble that I'm looking forward to seeing," he said. "It will bring back a lot of good memories."

Boaz said most of the returning performers continued with their music careers after they left the ensemble and are now professional musicians. Some of them he kept in touch with, but many players he has not seen since he graduated.

"It will be like a big reunion," he said.

Although Boaz said he is excited about seeing old friends, he particularly looks forward to reuniting with Sabanovich, whom he described as a great and influential teacher.

"He's passionate about music and a great drum player," he said. "He finds ways to connect with his students."

As a mentor and teacher for the ensemble for 24 years, Sabanovich has helped to maintain the Afro-Cuban musical traditions through musical education and performance, which is the band's primary objective.

His many years of research, study and practice in Brazilian music have made him known as a specialist in jazz and Afro-Brazilian and Afro-Cuban world music. Not many other colleges teach this specialized form of music, Sabanovich said.

"Teaching, to a certain extent, can sometimes be kind of a thankless task because you don't get a whole lot of recognition until you later see students who are coming back to play in a concert like this, and you see how they are doing in the music world," he said.

The ensemble has received more recognition than the average college band.

Last September, the ensemble was honored to play in the Monterey Jazz Festival, the world's largest festival of its kind. The band also produces its own CDs and the latest album, "Moment In Time," captured a lot of attention in the Bay Area, Sabanovich said.

In addition to an annual fall and spring concert on campus, the ensemble plays in clubs, schools, colleges and jazz festivals.

Teresa Orozco, a graduate student studying music at SJSU, who has played flute in the ensemble for three years, described her experience in the band as enriching and fulfilling because of the enthusiastic musicians.

"I'm very excited to see the returning players," she said. "Some of them I did my undergraduate work with and haven't seen for a long time."

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