20 years in the making: Mexican pop band finally making its Tucson debut

After a decade of flirting with urban and reggaeton music and collaborating with some pretty big names in both genres, the Mexican pop band Reik returned to its pop roots.

It was nothing that was planned or set in stone, says the Baja California, Mexico-born trio’s frontman Jesús Navarro.

It was more of a natural evolution 20 years in the making.

“I think that we’ve always tried to evolve and try things and try to work with the newer artists and producers and stuff,” Navarro said during a mid-August phone call from home in Mexico City. “You know, we’ve been around for 20 years and I think it’s important to surround yourself with fresh ears and fresh minds.”

The band flipped the script to reggaeton and urban in 2015, and after scoring modest hits in Latin and North America, the band on its 2024 album “Panorama” circled back to pop music.

The band brings the second U.S. swing of its “Panorama” tour to the AVA at Casino del Sol on Saturday, Oct. 11 — one of a handful of U.S. cities that the band missed the first round, Navarro said.

“We’re very excited. I think it’s a really big moment to see a show when it’s the end of the tour and everything is super tight and it sounds really, really great,” he said.

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“We’re doing these shows in the States and then four or five others (in Europe), and then we’re off to make a new album. So it’s a really nice way to say goodbye to the tour experience, the whole show, the whole tour, the whole album that’s been so, so amazing.”

Saturday’s set list will draw from “Panorama” and the Latin Grammy-winning band’s catalogue of six studio albums, two live albums and a pair of conceptual EPs.

“We try to include as much of our repertoire in the show as possible,” Navarro said, including medleys so that “everyone gets at least a little bit of a song that they wanted to hear.”

“It’s really important for us that the show is balanced,” he added, “that there’s something you can dance to, something you can really connect deeply with.”

Navarro and his bandmates, Julio Ramírez and Bibi Marín, are already looking beyond “Panorama.” The trio has been writing and recording throughout the tour and released the six-song EP “TQ” in late May. The project serves as a template for their next full-length album, Navarro said.

“That’s sort of the vibe that we’re going with,” he said. “It’s very similar to ‘Panorama,’ but it’s kind of fine tuned. I would say we’re still in the search of what our our sound is going to be for the next few years, but it’s a fun process.”

Reik takes the stage at the AVA, 5655 W. Valencia Road, at 8 p.m. Saturday. Tickets are $43.40-$133.40 through casinodelsol.com.