Pure Emotion.

• Author: Holston, Mark

If the nearly half-century-old Latin jazz movement has a certifiable father figure, it undoubtedly is seventy-five-year-old Cuban arranger/composer/big band leader Chico O'Farrill. His seminal work "Afro-Cuban Jazz Suite," recorded in 1950 by the orchestra of Cuban band leader Machito with jazz greats Charlie "Bird" Parker, Buddy Rich, and Flip Phillips, is widely viewed as the event that melded the disparate elements of Afro-Cuban rhythms and bebop jazz improvisation into a vital new entity.

Remarkably, considering his stature as an orchestral innovator of the first order, Pure Emotion is O'Farrill's first album as a leader in three decades. Recorded in New York, where he has permanently resided since the early 1960s, the album features the talents of a twenty-two-member all-star ensemble, including such icons of the style as saxophonist Mario Rivera, trumpeter Victor Paz, and bassist Andy Gonzalez.

The recording's tour de force, the twelve-minute "Variations on a Well-Known...