For his live performance at New York’s distinguished Blue Note Jazz club, D’Rivera chooses the commendable route of recording with his working band of five years rather than the more commercially so , all-star grouping. ‘I realized that I had never recorded with this quintet. This quintet is the engine for all my other projects,’ admits D’Rivera. D’Rivera’s quintet - trumpeter Diego Urcola, pianist Dario Eskenazi, bassist Oscar Stagnaro, and drummer Mark Walker - perform a colorful latin program.
   Live at the Blue Note is certainly a departure for D’Rivera in more ways than one from his more recent orchestral projects. D’Rivera primarily sticks to playing the alto saxophone throughout most of the performance, beginning with "Curumim," a composition from brazilian composer Cesar Camargo Mariano. "I am a fan of the composer, Cesar Camargo Mariano. I heard the song over twenty years ago and I fell in love with the song. Many years later, I met Cesar Camargo and I asked him for the song and he sent me the piano part for that. It means the son of the indian. It’s a great song," explains D’Rivera. The scintillating trumpet charts of Buenos Aires native Urcola, who occasionally performs in George Chuller’s Orange Then Blue, simply outrace everyone else, except for fellow Argentinean, pianist Eskenazi, whose poised narration sets the tone for the remainder of the session. An uptempo D’Rivera original, "El Cura," follows with the saxophonist uncorking a burning solo, blowing hard to the ideal backdrop laid out by Eskenazi, Stagnaro, and Walker.                               
   The saxophonist expresses, "that is a dedication to a very dear friend of mine, the great guitar player and one of my main influences in jazz music, Carlos Morales. He was the guitar player in Irakere for more than twenty years. We called him ‘El Cura’ because he looked like a priest." D’Rivera’s rhapsodic clarinet playing for Urcola’s homage to his native Argentinean homeland, "Buenos Aires," is a main point of interest. D’Rivera professes, "what he (Urcola) wrote reflects very well the atmosphere of Buenos Aires, especially at night I have been there many times. It’s a beautiful city." "to me ‘Tobago’ sounds like a theme inspired by Horace Silver," says D’Rivera. Eskenazi’s "Tobago," features inventive solos from Stagnaro on electric bass and Walker. "Como Un Bolero" is a bolero that the leader wrote while he was with the Caribbean Jazz Project with Andy Narell and Dave Samuels. "It is a romantic bolero.            
   The bolero is the national Cuban ballad. I call it a ballad with some black beans and rice," explains D’Rivera. "Centro Havana,!’ an original penned dy guest flutist Oriente Lopez, is a rich melody that is destined to become a standard. ‘I heard that piece first recorded by Regina Carter I liked it very much and I called Oriente and asked him for the piece and he gave me the whole arrangement. That piece is killing," confirms the cuban-american bandleader.
   The grammy award winning D’Rivera’s credentials speak for themselves and as evident by this performance, the cuban-american has become a great leader. Join D’Rivera for an extraordinary journey into the music of latin america by genuine latin americans.