All three members of La Lucha came to jazz relatively late in their still-young lives. None of them heard Coltrane at age six, fell under his thrall, and woodshedded eight hours a day to master Giant Steps. That’s one reason that presenting a show at The Palladium Theater called “‘80s Jazz Party” — where the trio jazz-ifys, or, to be more precise, “La Lucha-fys,” pop tunes from that decade — is completely natural.
“We are children of the ‘80s,” declares bassist Alejandro Arenas, who, at 37, is three years older than his bandmates. “And we enjoy the challenge, the idea, of bringing music into jazz that you would not think belongs there. That has been a big part of development of the La Lucha sound.”
This is the trio’s fourth crack at an ‘80s-theme concert; the first one was in 2015 when keyboardist John O’Leary and drummer Mark Feinman turned 30 and played tunes from their birth year of 1985. The concept has broadened to encompass the entire decade. For this show, a mix of instrumentals and vocals, the group will be joined by Jamie Perlow, a versatile singer conversant in pop and jazz.
By now, La Lucha has a formidable repertoire of ’80s tunes, but for each new show it adds some fresh ones. Without revealing the entire setlist, La Lucha offered a couple of teasers. The group is planning to perform Tina Turner’s “What’s Love Got to Do With It” and a medley wherein Feinman will leave the drums and play vibraphone. The guys seem the most stoked about taking on Culture Club’s “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me.”
“I thought, ‘This could make a really nice jazz ballad,'” Arenas says, so he set about re-imagining it as such. “One thing we like to do is keep the melodies as intact as possible. We might change the meter or alter the harmony to make it jazzier, but you’ll still recognize the song.”
Arenas grew up in Colombia, O’Leary in Mexico and Feinman in Clearwater. Collectively, they had musical backgrounds in heavy metal, punk rock, classical, Latin and more. The troika met at USF and became fast friends and musical fellow travelers. That’s where a penchant for jazz solidified.
“I joined the jazz band in high school, and wasn’t very good at it, but I started listening and working at it,” O’Leary says. “I studied jazz [at USF], but didn’t make the full transition into being a professional jazz musician until I was 28.”
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Since releasing a debut album, A Cup of Fuzzy Water (led off with a beguiling version of Bowie’s “Space Oddity”), 10 years ago, La Lucha has gained more and more acclaim, and has played its share of out-of-town (and overseas) festivals. Last year saw the arrival of a fourth album, Pa’ Lante, the trio’s most mature and Lucha-esque effort thus far. O’Leary delves further into electronic keyboards — he played real Fender Rhodes and Wurlitzer electric pianos and a reissued Moog synthesizer on the sessions — wrenching ever more intriguing sounds from them. He saves his most elegant and probing solos for acoustic piano. The pleasingly melodic album bears some kinship to the funk-fusion of the ’70s, but also incorporates considerable Latin elements and even dashes of rock and reggae.
While each member possesses formidable technique — best evidenced in their spirited live set at Marchand’s at the Vinoy Renaissance Resort on Friday — La Lucha is a sum-of-the-parts unit, more committed to collective chemistry than strutting their individual prowess. It makes music together — and it’s abundantly clear that La Lucha prefers it that way.
La Lucha: ‘80s Jazz Party feat. vocalist Jamie Perlow. Fri. Aug. 16, 8 p.m. $20-$40. Side Door Cabaret at the Palladium, St. Petersburg. mypalladium.org.
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This article appears in Aug 15-22, 2019.