Eddie Palmieri | Courtesy Jefferson Center

By Tad Dickens | 777-6474

Latin jazz and salsa pianist Eddie Palmieri, at 76, still can get a crowd going with his Afro-Cuban music and grooves. His music still has the power to move behinds.

Palmieri, who headlines Jefferson Center on Friday, believes that his genre will always have that power. And he even knows why. During his decades of study and performance, he dug into the Schillinger System of Musical Composition, which breaks down the music via mathematics. Palmieri emerged with what might be the hippest possible explanation of his music’s power.

“In those arrangements, there’s tension and resistance,” Palmieri said in a recent phone interview. “And the tension and resistance is going to lead you to an exciting musical climax.

“If sex and danger are the exciters, the reaction of the human being to that is love and fear. That must be in the arrangement. That way you generate that centrifugal force.

“When a piano player gives a solo to a bongo player, to the timbales, to the conga, we’re generating more and more energy, so that when the full tutti of the brass comes, if you don’t get excited … you’d better check yourself into a hospital or something. You’re not well.

“And that’s why that music is just so unique, so wonderful. I’ve dedicated my whole life to it.”

Read the rest of the story and get show details at http://www.roanoke.com/319369