Poncho Sanchez returns to the Festival of Arts for the dynamic conclusion of the Concerts on the Green series on August 18. For more than three decades as both a leader and a sideman, conguero Poncho Sanchez has stirred up a fiery stew of straight-ahead jazz, gritty soul music, and infectious melodies and rhythms from a variety of Latin American and South American sources. His influences are numerous, but among the more prominent figures that influenced his music are two of the primary architects of Latin jazz – conga drummer/composer Chano Pozo and trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie.

If music were pictures, Grammy Award-winning percussionist Poncho Sanchez’s music would be best described as a kaleidoscopic swirl of some of the hottest colors and brightest lights to emerge from either side of the border. At any given show, on any given record, fragments of Latin jazz, swing, bebop, salsa and other infectious grooves collide and churn in a fiery swirl, with results that are no less than dazzling.