Pablo Batista's 'El Viaje (The Journey)' depicts the American immigrant's tale through music and dance

IT'S ONLY THE second rehearsal for percussionist/composer Pablo Batista's new suite, El Viaje (The Journey), and quite a few elements are missing: the dancers, the spoken-word recitals, the multimedia imagery (though in their place, basketball games play silently on two screens).

Still, there are 15 musicians arrayed in a tight circle in a rehearsal space in East Oak Lane, grappling with an ambitious piece that combines jazz, classical music, neo-soul, and traditional Afro-Cuban rhythms, and the mood grows a bit harried. While the premiere of El Viaje this weekend will mark the culmination of nearly 20 years of research and writing, Batista is characteristically relaxed and quick to ease the tension.

"Break it down," he commands the room. "It's a little too intense in here."

With almost three weeks left until showtime at that point, the intensity could still be put off for a while. It should be on full display this weekend at Temple Performing Arts Center, as Batista traces a journey that is both personal and global.

El Viaje follows his family's migration from Africa to Puerto Rico, his parents' homeland, to the U.S. - in particular, to Bethlehem, where Batista was born and raised. The same path traces the evolution of American music from its African origins through its Caribbean evolution to its development into jazz and other popular forms in the New World.

"It's a combination of the classical world with the African folklore that is our roots," Batista said a few days later from his home in Bala Cynwyd. "We combine them to tell a universal story, which is inclusive of many of our peoples in the United States. A lot of people have had to endure forced migration; a lot of people have had to suffer and leave their families. There are a lot of beautiful moments, but there are a lot of dark moments as well, but at the end it's really about resilience, family, and the assimilation that all of the peoples in the United States have had to go through to make America their home."

Batista will tell that story with the help of 22 performers, including musicians and dancers, weaving a story as vast as the legacy of slavery and as close to home as the closing of Bethlehem Steel and its impact on the families of its immigrant workers, including Batista's father. The composer is hesitant to define the sprawling 90-minute piece, which at some points resembles opera, at others a big-band suite, at others a dance-theater performance.

During rehearsal earlier this month, Batista coached the horn section through a bawdy crescendo with instructions to "think Cotton Club, think burlesque."

The same piece later takes a turn into a Philly-bred, neo-soul groove inspired by Batista's years touring with artists like Grover Washington Jr. and Alicia Keys.

Playing on Key's elaborate stage sets during several world tours helped inspire the more theatrical elements of El Viaje. As he recalls, "We'd walk onto our risers, and it looked like we were playing on the fire escapes of an apartment building in the Bronx. It was amazing - the lights, the backdrops, the dancers, the musicians, every aspect had an effect. That stayed in the back of my mind."

He traces the origins of El Viaje much further back, however, to his instinctual passion for the drums that family members repeatedly suggested must trace back to some long-lost ancestor in Africa. More directly, he was fascinated by a photograph of his grandmother, who had much darker skin than most of his Puerto Rican relatives.

"She was just gorgeous," he says, "and it dawned on me that my family comes from Africa. So I started to do a little bit of ancestral research, and here I am, decades and decades later, and I'm just as excited and motivated."

An early, smaller version of the piece was premiered by Batista's Mambo Syndicate ensemble in 2014 as part of the Kimmel Center's inaugural Jazz Residency program. With funding help from the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, he has fleshed it out with help from cowriter/arrangers Dennis Guevara and Victor Pablo Garcia-Gaetan and Cuban choreographer Gilset Mora.

There was a preview performance in March at the Barnes.

Batista is quick to shy away from voicing political opinions, but the suite's immigration story can't help but bring recent campaign rhetoric to mind.

"It's a scary time in American history for me," he says. "But this piece is about humanity. When it's over, people can look up and say, 'This was my family' or 'We're all God's children.' They might pray differently or speak a different language, but when you smile at someone and they smile back, that all goes away and we're all people. There's a longing for acceptance, for family, for love, and a longing for security. Everything is interwoven because this is the experience of my lifetime."

Pablo Batista's "El Viaje (The Journey)," 8 p.m. Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday, Temple Performing Arts Center, 1837 N. Broad St. $15-$25, 215-204-9860, elviaje.pablobatista.net, templeperformingartscenter.org.