Mario Rivera — born in Santo Domingo on 22 July 1939, died in New York on 10 August 2007 — was a Dominican saxophonist, multi-instrumentalist, composer and arranger, and for more than four decades one of the most sought-after sidemen in New York jazz, Latin jazz and salsa. Known as El Comandante, he was a mainstay of Tito Puente’s Latin jazz ensembles and made a single album as a leader, a fusion of merengue and jazz.

Santo Domingo to New York

He moved to New York in 1961, at twenty-two, and began by accompanying the Puerto Rican singer Joe Valle; from 1963 to 1965 he played with Tito Rodríguez. Before the Dominican migration of the 1980s transformed Washington Heights, he was, with Johnny Pacheco, a prominent Dominican figure in a Latin music scene dominated by Puerto Ricans and Cubans.

A house full of instruments

The saxophone was his main instrument, and he played the whole family — soprano, alto, tenor and baritone — at a soloist’s level; he was also one of the few saxophonists who mastered the flute in the Cuban charanga style, and he played trumpet, piano, vibraphone, drums, timbales and congas. He liked to say he played twenty-four instruments. His apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side was filled with them, and friends who came by after gigs were handed one and told to jam.

With the masters

His baritone solo on «Mambo a la Tito», from Tito Puente’s «20th Anniversary» (1967), is a good introduction to his playing, and over the following decades he became the quiet engine of Puente’s Latin jazz ensemble. He also worked with Machito, Sonny Stitt, Charlie and Eddie Palmieri — on Palmieri’s «Sentido» (1973) he introduces and all but takes over «No pienses así» — «Típica 73», the George Coleman Octet, Slide Hampton’s Jazz Masters, Chico O’Farrill’s orchestra and, from 1988, Dizzy Gillespie’s United Nation Orchestra. He appeared with Puente in the films «The Mambo Kings» and «Calle 54». When merengue took over New York in the 1980s and 1990s, visiting Dominican stars went to his home to pay their respects; he played on Fernando Villalona’s «Así soy yo» (1984) and on «Fogaraté!» (1994) by Juan Luis Guerra 4.40, and shared stages and records with José Alberto "El Canario".

«El Comandante»

He led two groups of his own. The «Salsa Refugees» was a way out of the limits of salsa and a training ground for younger musicians such as Andy and Jerry González, Steve Turre and Michel Camilo; the Mario Rivera Sextet left no recordings. In the mid-1990s he released his only album as a leader, «El Comandante», which set merengue systematically against jazz improvisation and paid homage to his model, the Dominican saxophonist Tavito Vásquez. It went largely unnoticed at first, something that hurt him.

Teacher and elder

Younger players sought him out: Crispín Fernández studied harmony and saxophone technique with him. In January 2007, seven months before his death, the trombonist Conrad Herwig introduced him on stage as «our father», and his last recorded solo, on soprano saxophone, was «Flamenco Mood» with the Latin Giants of Jazz. After he died, the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra under Arturo O’Farrill played at his memorial service in Manhattan.

Legacy

Mario Rivera spent his career in other people’s bands, and colleagues regarded him as a musician’s musician and, in his own right, a legend. His one album remains a rare sustained attempt to join merengue and jazz, and his name is cited among the Latino musicians whose part in the history of jazz has long been overlooked.