Arturo Sandoval At the Blue Note

>Miami is not known as a home to great musicians. When a town is associated with Gloria Estefan and Jon Secada, you have to wonder if microphones should be outlawed and police encouraged to stop loiterers and strip-search them to prevent further dissemination of pick-up cords and pre-amps.

So I must confess to my surprise-and my delight-when I heard trumpeter Arturo Sandoval, fresh off a flight from the Sunshine State, shining forth at the Blue Note last week. The gladness, or more accurately enchantment, was heightened by the knowledge that Sandoval's excellence left me in the moral clear to write about his triumph in a concert that the Press cosponsored.

Still, I confess that I headed to the show with some apprehensions. These misgivings were awakened first and foremost by the knowledge that Sandoval's life had been portrayed onscreen by Andy Garcia in a tv movie whose advertising tagline was: "She was his love. Music was his passion. Freedom was his dream."

To be fair, Sandoval's life-with its escapes and loves and travels-is dramatic and his work important, and perhaps this is the reason the movie is said to be much better than you might think. Or at least it's a reason, for the film also had a top-flight cast that included Charles Dutton as Dizzy Gillespie. (Sadly, Dutton, an indisputably great actor, mostly seems to find work playing jazz musicians whom he resembles about as much as I do Brad Pitt. Garcia as Sandoval was similarly bad casting. The night I saw the trumpeter, he was more or less exactly 103 pounds heavier than Garcia, and 104 times less self-important.)

Sandoval's easygoing, relaxed earthiness is, I think, important to his art because its signal quality is its inclusiveness. Classically trained, Sandoval is comfortable incorporating everything from Beethoven to Cuban folk songs to be-bop, and on the night I saw him, he played bop, blues, salsa and Latin pop tunes, and he showed his virtuosity not only on the trumpet but the piano as well.

Perhaps partly because the Blue Note was the location of the show and the label for the album whose release he was promoting, Sandoval made clear, though, that bop was his favorite type of music and that Gillespie remained his hero, in addition to having been his mentor.

Recollection of this prompts me to repeat the true-but-hokey story about which the film must have made considerable hay. When Gillespie arrived in Cuba in 1977, Sandoval rushed to the boat Gillespie was disembarking from, introducing himself as a helpful fan. He then spent the day leading Gillespie around town, putting Dizzy in touch with the city's best black musicians-without revealing until that evening that he, already among the country's most respected trumpeters, was himself a musician.

Sandoval played with soul, spirit and, most of all, joy, and his mixed-race band included a wonderful guitarist and conga man.

If I have one criticism of the show it would be that it went too fast. It seemed hardly even an hour, although my watch subsequently revealed that more than 90 minutes had passed.