Pop Reviews : Santana: High Gear for Latin-Rock Guitar

Guitarist Carlos Santana, who merges Latin rhythms with rock better than anyone, and a six-member band opened a three-night stand Thursday at the Greek Theatre with high-powered, mostly instrumental, Latin-rock fusion pieces, propelled by three percussionists and laced with Santana’s flashy, high-speed playing.

Spotlighting up-tempo numbers with a change-of-pace ballad tossed in here and there, the band, for the most part, played crisply and forcefully. But there were lapses, with the rhythms sometimes muddled and some Santana solos out of kilter with the other music. It seemed at times as if he were forsaking cohesion in favor of demonstrating just how fast he could play.

Santana clearly still has jazz aspirations, though most rock fans would likely be pleased if he permanently buried that chapter of his career. Though he made no lengthy, full-fledged forays into that territory Thursday, when occasional jazz-like inflections crept into his improvised solos you could almost see visions of jazz great George Benson dancing in his head.

When jazz-rock numbers sometimes dominated his sets in the past, Santana often seemed like a fish out of water, floundering though numbers based on half-formed ideas, trying improvisations that were beyond his skills. This time he stuck to what he does best.