Oscar Hernndez's Spanish Harlem Orchestra has been on a Grammy roll since its 2002 debut album, "Un gran da en El Barrio."
The 13-member band's first three CDs were all nominated for the prestigious award; the second one won. Hernndez is looking to continue the tradition with the band's fourth CD, "Viva la Tradicin" (Concord Records), released last month.
"I hope we get another nomination," says Hernndez, 56. "I certainly feel that it deserves that and maybe even another Grammy."
Hernndez, a renowned pianist who has collaborated with the likes of Rubn Blades, Celia Cruz and Tito Puente in a career spanning four decades, is marking 10 years of his own successful Latin jazz and salsa band with a concert at Hostos Center for the Arts and Culture on Saturday.
Viva caught up with him last week:
Tell us a bit about the new CD.
The concept is similar to all the other stuff we do, because that's the concept of the band, steeped in the tradition of what this music is. The guest artist is [Cuban salsero] Isaac Delgado.
Like your previous albums, the latest has a classic 1970s salsa sound. Why not give it a more contemporary twist?
Contemporary usually means that you are kind of selling out and doing music for just commercial purposes and "no me nace," it doesn't come out of my heart that way. Commercial is what people are paying to get on the radio. ...
Obviously, we are not with a record company that is paying payola to get this on the radio. ... [But] the quality of the music we put out is topnotch.
It merits for people to sit down and find out who we are ... and there are people all over the world doing exactly that, because we've played in Hong Kong, Japan, Australia, Israel, Indonesia, Singapore, every single country in Europe just about.
Anything special planned for Saturday?
Two of our original singers are going to be the guest artists. That's Hermn Olivera and Frankie Vzquez. At one point, we'll have five singers.
Have you ever played a place and wondered how they knew about Latin music?
One place I've never been to is Croatia; we are going there for New Year's, and I'm curious. In Hong Kong, I was like, "Man, who knows us out here?" It's not like we have a big fan base, but now there's salsa dancers and salsa followers all over the world. I mean, it's unbelievable. ...
We played in cities in England that I'm going like, "Oh, this is kind of remote," and there's 1,000 people dancing salsa.
mjunco@nydailynews.com
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