GLORIA ESTEFAN : A new twist on old hits.(news)

BYLINE: DOUG ELFMAN REVIEW-JOURNAL

There are probably quite a few people who are happy that they didn't go see Gloria Estefan in concert, because they didn't want to hear "Conga" one more time, or maybe they thought "Music of My Heart" was made of cheese.

These people couldn't really be blamed. Wedding DJs and other CD spinners have played "Conga" to death, and the Diane Warren-penned "Music of My Heart," whether it was nominated for an Oscar or not, was borne of tree sap.

But Estefan's show at the Mandalay Bay Events Center on Saturday was a surprisingly fresh renewal of familiar songs. We knew Estefan's work, but she and her 16-piece band performed them with invigorating, wall-of-sound arrangements based on salsa percussions and enlivened with horns.

On the radio, Estefan has always presented her ballads with lean and spare song structures, probably because, as she has said, citizens of the States don't go for all the dramatic twists and turns of Latin music.

But on Saturday, she and her sound machine gave the normally elemental "Words Get In the Way" a breezy, groovy Latin feeling. And she altered the choruses of the multimelody "Here We Are" by singing in Spanish, then English.

Estefan changed her classy clothes on several occasions. In strong voice, she sang ballads in black, which was the pant and shirt color of the night for her middle-age crowd of 10,000. Estefan changed into a red dress to sing a set of Spanish-language songs.