Carlos Santana forming new all-star band

Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Carlos Santana is getting ready to reunite one band and launch another.

The former Tijuana guitarist, who is a 2013 Kennedy Center Honors recipient, is nearing the final stages of his reunion album with the Santana lineup that performed in 1971 and 1972. The reunited group’s lineup will include keyboardist/singer Gregg Rolie (a former Poway resident), percussionist Michael Carabello, drummer Michael Shrieve and guitarist Neal Schon, who after leaving Santana co-founded the band Journey. Santana expects the new/old group’s album to be completed this fall, with a tour to follow next year.

“It sounds great,” Santana told Billboard magazine. “There’s so much energy. The songs are so vibrant and I’m really, really grateful. I’ve never heard Greg sound better; we know he can play, but you should hear him singing. His voice has never been better. And Neal is one of the baddest guitar players around. It’s just been a great joy all the way around and we can’t wait for people to hear it.”

The bigger news, though, at least for jazz fans, is that Carlos Santana is forming a new all-star band. It will team him with three jazz giants -- keyboardist Herbie Hancock, saxophonist Wayne Shorter and guitarist John McLaughlin, with whom Santana recorded the 1973 album, “Love, Devotion, Surrender” and “Invitation to Illumination—Live At Montreux 2010,” which will be released Sept. 22.

Woodstock festival veteran Santana has dubbed the new band Supernova. It is named after a landmark 1969 album by Shorter that also features McLaughlin. Noted jazz musician Cindy Blackman, who is Santana’s wife, will be the drummer in Supernova. Carlos Santana and Shorter have collaborated on a number of albums, including “Carlos Santana/Wayne Shorter Live at the 1988 Montreux Jazz Festival,” which was released in 2007.

(“We’ll) definitely (do) spring recording and summer touring in Europe and maybe America,” Santana told Billboard magazine.

“Can you hear it? It’s kind of like playing with, sharing music with Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking, ‘cause Wayne and Herbie, they’re at that level of genius, genius, genius, genius. I’m just grateful that they accept it and want to do it. And every time I play with Cindy, it goes viral. People go crazy. The energy between Cindy and I is very, very supernova.”

The key qualifier in the quote above is “maybe America.” To hear Santana tell it, Supernova may be better suited to jazz-savvy European audiences.

“America is still into ‘Tutti Frutti’ and that kind of stuff,” he told Billboard. “There’s a side of America that’s not really evolved with John Coltrane and Miles [Davis]. (Americans are), with all respect, hung up on Kenny G and people sounding like that -- with all respect to [G]. But that’s not Coltrane and never will be Coltrane, so I don’t know if people (here) will really be into what [Supernova] will bring.”

ON Sept. 16, Santana and his current band will resume their multi-year concert residency at the House of Blues in Las Vegas. The group’s closest upcoming date to San Diego will be Oct. 31 in Tucson.