A Class Act Goes Back on the Stage : * Jazz: Charles Otwell now teaches what he’s learned from years performing with dozens of musicians. A reunion of sorts is taking him back before the spotlight.

When Charles Otwell speaks of “paunch,” he’s not referring to someone’s sizable belly. The pianist, composer and arranger is talking about his friend--bandleader and conguero Poncho Sanchez.

Otwell was there at the beginning, when Sanchez formed his first Latin jazz band. He then went on to serve for 10 years as Sanchez’s keyboardist and musical director. “Ponch’s band evolved out of another band I was in with (guitarist) Bobby Redfield,” Otwell said earlier this week by phone from his home in Orange.

“Bobby knew Ponch from the Cal Tjader days, and Ponch started coming down to sit in with us on bongo when we played the old Studio Cafe in Balboa,” said Otwell, who plays tonight at El Matador in Huntington Beach. “(Percussionist) Ramon Banda was in the group, and he got his brother Tony to play bass. We’d get horn players to come down, and the band got larger. Ponch was finding musicians that he liked, and we just put the band together out of that group.”

The ensemble’s first performance in 1979 in Santa Barbara was followed by a whirlwind of recording and travel. “We went all over: Europe, up and down both coasts, Puerto Rico, Mexico City. That’s the beauty of that kind of music. You can work in two environments: anywhere they appreciate Latin music, or just plain jazz (venues).”

Of those early days with Sanchez, Otwell recalled: “We used to do a lot of rehearsing, and Ponch would spend a lot of time at my house, playing with ideas. He wanted the traditional concept--he uses the traditional Latin rhythm section still--to carry on the format that Mongo (Santamaria) and Tito (Puente) had made famous, yet do his own thing with it. We had a trombone player with us all the time and things just started to jell into that kind of sound--started to get into that groove that he does now.”

Otwell, who wrote and arranged a number of tunes for Sanchez (including all of the 1985 release “El Conguero”) plays down his role as musical director. “It’s a glorified term for the guy who does the paperwork, a kind of secretarial position,” he said. “I was the one who ended up writing out all the charts.”

The 41-year-old keyboardist and native of Toledo, Ohio, took a circuitous route to the beach clubs of Orange County and the Sanchez band. His father “sang his way through college,” said Otwell, and also played tuba and violin. His older brother Marshall, who later spent time as Carmen McRae’s accompanist and now works as a computer programmer, was also an influence. Charles began studying piano at age 6 and led his first jazz combo, the Casual Trio, at age 15. He lived in New York for a year, “just to hang out” and frequented a West Village club where an idol of his, Ahmad Jamal, played frequently.

From there it was on to San Francisco, where he started playing a variety of gigs, most notably with Jack Bonus, the eclectic singer-guitarist for the Jefferson Airplane’s Grunt label.

Otwell’s first trip to Los Angeles was with that band when it came down for an interview with Wolfman Jack at the Capitol Records building in Hollywood. He also worked in the San Francisco fusion group Wicca in the early ‘70s, playing gigs for the Hell’s Angels, among others. But, according to the keyboardist, they never really caught on.

“It was at the end of that wild period in San Francisco,” he said, “and we were just a hair too much on the experimental side.” Later, he worked with the Orange County-based fusion band High Mileage, playing such venues as the Red Onion in Newport Beach and the White House in Laguna Niguel.

By then, Otwell’s talents were well-known among his fellow musicians and he began traveling the country with various minor Top 40 bands, as well as with better-known acts including Bobby Hatfield of the Righteous Brothers. In 1977, he joined Melissa Manchester’s road band.

It was this series of road trips, beginning in the mid-’70s, that eventually made him decide to leave his position with Sanchez. “Some of those Top 40 bands were out on the road for months at a time. One of the Manchester tours was very long. By the time things were starting to blossom for Poncho and he was going to Europe, I was getting really (tired of) being on the road.”

Otwell also had developed a pair of other interests: teaching and writing. “At one point, I either had to give up teaching or get my credentials. So I made the decision to leave Poncho and stay in town, go to school and work on my novel.”

Now Otwell teaches classes in popular music theory, pop piano and songwriting, dividing his time between Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa and Rancho Santiago College in Santa Ana. “I really have a lot of fun teaching,” he said. “I don’t know if I’m good, but I have the feeling that I am and that my students get what I’m telling them. By the end of the semester I can see that light over their head has gone on. It’s very satisfying, knowing you’ve given something back to the music.”

He still gets calls for session work, especially Latin gigs, but it’s not something he likes to do. “(Saxophonist) Gary Foster once described studio work as 95% boredom and 5% sheer terror,” he said. “That particular mix of emotions never really appealed to me.”

When he’s not teaching or writing music, he finds time to work on the third draft of his novel, a book he describes as “a spy thriller set in the future.” On the musical side, he’s writing more orchestral music and classical piano music, including fugues, “just to get some different chops.”

He’s still involved with Latin jazz, but it’s no longer a central focus. “At the end of my tenure with Ponch, I felt that I had mined that field long enough,” he said. “But I still write a little bit of Latin jazz, and think it’s a great medium. It’s hard to describe, but there’s something about the way the rhythms are fixed that makes it seem real restricting. But it actually opens things up for you. The harmonic possibilities are just beginning to be tapped.”

His appearance tonight at El Matador in Huntington Beach will be something of a reunion for Otwell, bassist Ernie Nunez, drummer Gordon Peeke and percussionist Kurt Rasmussen, all of whom played a regular gig at the Studio Cafe on Balboa in the late ‘80s under the name Europa. The keyboardist said the program will focus on Afro-Cuban and Brazilian sounds. So even though he won’t be there in the flesh, “Ponch” certainly will be along in musical spirit.

* Keyboardist Charles Otwell, bassist Ernie Nunez, drummer Gordon Peeke and percussionist Kurt Rasmussen appear tonight at 8:30 and 10 at El Matador, 16903 Algonquin St., Huntington Beach. No cover. (714) 846-5337.