Let’s just get this out of the way — Arturo Sandoval is obscenely talented.

He’s famous for his trumpet playing. But he’s also a brilliant keyboard player. He sings well, and with emotion, and scat-sings like a combination jazzman/comedian.

None of these skills have diminished for the 59-year-old musician and composer. He even played like he had something to prove. An audience of 831 at the 935-capacity Jefferson Center was sold as Sandoval led his six-piece band through about two hours of virtuosity Saturday night.

If the crowd came expecting a full-on Latin music experience from the Cuban-born Sandoval, he set them straight from the beginning, taking the stage accompanied only by bassist Armando Gola, to play "Mack the Knife." Swinging along at mid-tempo, Sandoval slurred, trilled and took his soloing outside the box, often at intense speeds that left some in the crowd gasping — setting the tone that would carry him and the crowd through the full range of what a trumpet can do.

In the past, record labels, producers, promoters and other music industry types would "force me to play the kind of music I don’t want to play," Sandoval said. "I like to play jazz.

"And I hate that word, ‘salsa.’ In Cuba, where I came from, salsa is a condiment."

So, jazz it was, and standards, at that. He then led the band through "Autumn Leaves" and "Body and Soul" — and if you think of those songs as overplayed pieces of dinner music, you might be right. But not with this group. Sandoval and saxophonist Ed Calle not only had chops to burn, but also deep musical instincts.

After those tunes, he gave a quick lecture about the importance of preserving jazz music.

"I’m going to keep doing it till I have no way to blow this," he said, pointing at the trumpet and flugelhorn at his feet, "or I die."

Then he walked over to the piano and played, "Oscar," a song he composed for the late pianist, Oscar Peterson. He was grounded but flashy, almost full of himself, but with a keen sense of dynamics. Later, he would play a synthesizer with his left hand while blowing trumpet with his right, harmonizing through a wickedly twisting solo on his cover of the Miles Davis song, "Tutu."

Toward the end, he did play some Latin jazz, with the band rock solid behind him on his "Rhythm of Our World."