http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/15/arts/music/rubn-blades-at-the-rose-theater.html 2014-11-15 00:52:19 Rubén Blades at the Rose Theater The Panamanian singer Rubén Blades took a step out of his comfort zone in performing with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. === The reality that jazz and Afro-Latin music have been mixed for a century can sometimes lead to the myth that a musician trained in one tradition is effectively trained in the other, and that fluency runs both ways at all times, in all places. And so you might have looked at an advertisement for the Panamanian singer Not really, though. What they’re doing isn’t a glib middle ground. It’s a jazz band playing Afro-Latin dance music with authority, which it has taught itself to do over the years, and Mr. Blades gamely singing American standards jazz-style, which he isn’t known for; sometimes, it’s both in the same song. The new arrangements are by the orchestra’s bassist, Carlos Henriquez. They alternate, and sometimes fuse, Mr. Blades, 66, may be best known for the progressive New York salsa records he made at the start of his career in the late ’70s, singing provocative lyrics about power relationships and social realities over Willie Colón’s arrangements. Though he’s a strong and resourceful singer, his endeavor is a literary one as much as anything else. He’s working with not only regional traditions of rhythm and sound, but also with global traditions of narrative and politics. He’s been as a statesman, too, serving as his country’s minister of tourism. But storytelling does, to a greater extent, and therefore language, too. On Thursday he seemed most comfortable in songs that had a lot to say, that kept developing a thought or a metaphor; these were typically his own, and sung in Spanish. If there was a peak moment of audience joy, it came during Given his vocal range and his ability to mimic — he imitated Sammy Davis Jr.’s speech patterns a few times on Thursday — he could probably put on a decent imitation of Frank Sinatra. He didn’t do that; he found his own way, taking the job seriously, and hitting some bumps. In songs like “Too Close for Comfort,” “Fever” (sung in a duet with his wife, Luba Mason) and “They Can’t Take That Away From Me,” as well as “Don’t Like Goodbyes,” by Harold Arlen and Truman Capote, he shut down some words a bit early and over-invested certain phrases with vibrato; it was a tentative and regimented kind of singing that made you too aware of meter. Mr. Blades is loose and personable on stage. But it was fascinating how he could sometimes seem limited by the literary concision of the songs he chose, in which a line or a stanza stands autonomously, with its own meaning, without flowing toward the next thought. It’s not easy to put on a concert like this: It takes preparation and momentum. Mr. Henriquez’s arrangements delivered consistently. The pianist Dan Nimmer fit the songs’ changing requirements, and Wynton Marsalis’s extravagant trumpet playing in