ANDY NEVALA, El Rumbón

While veteran pianist Andy Nevala’s performing and recording career has included stints with the Glenn Miller Orchestra and the Atlanta Latin Jazz Orchestra in addition to leading his own quartet, the heart of everything in his world is jazz education.

The first doctoral student in the Jazz Studies Program at the University of Colorado, he is currently Director of Jazz Studies at Jacksonville State University in Jacksonville, Alabama. Under his direction, the JSU Jazz Ensemble has won two Downbeat Student Music Awards, which brings his lifetime total to 10.

Truly living up to its dynamic title, his third solo album El Rumbón is at its core the ultimate Latin jazz party album, performed with exuberance, intuitive dialoguing and non-stop melodic, harmonic and rhythmic excitement by Nevala and his sextet, Yet the ensemble offers so much more in the way of celebrating so many of the genre’s vibrant polyrhythms, spicy and essential cultural dialogues and fresh, imaginative, alternately explosive and gracefully lyrical arrangements of traditional jazz, Latin jazz and contemporary pop standards.

Listeners will likely gravitate first to his re-imaginings of familiar pop and jazz tunes by Stevie Wonder (an Afro-Cuban 6/8 romp through “Isn’t She Lovely”), Herbie Hancock (a hypnotic bembe grooving spin), Sting (a graceful but lively bossa nova/partido alto stroll through “Fragile”), high energy jams of iconic Dizzy Gillespie and John Coltrane gems and the always winsome breezes of “Garota de Ipanema.” Those get the party going, but it’s Nevala and Co.’s artful navigations of new terrain on deeper Latin treasures like Eliseo Grenet’s “Lamento Cubano” and the a guaguancó-driven title track that take the festivities further into a wild night.