Larry Harlow, promotional photo
“La Raza Latina,” composer-pianist Larry Harlow’s hour-plus Latin big band extravaganza, drew thousands to Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors’ penultimate concert last week, proving that driving, multi-layered live music has staying power decades after its creation. “A Salsa Suite” featured vocalists Ruben Blades and Adonis Puentes, choreographed couples and a 40 piece band with strings and extraordinary soloists on trumpets, congas, flute, saxes and violins. Harlow conducted the music he’d recorded in 1978 but never performed before.  Salsa — combining Afro-Cuban rhythms and singing styles with big band jazz pyrotechnics — lives! But you knew that, right . . . ?
The suite’s theme was self-celebratory, and the crowd which had waited hours, stretching as far as eye could see up Amsterdam Avenue for Damrosch Park to open, was eager to dig it. From VIP seating the audience seemed overwhelmingly 50ish and older, but flocks of younger listeners in back, without view of the stage, danced up a storm and were reluctant to leave at the end of the concert’s three-hours.