JAZZ REVIEWS : GETZ, GILLESPIE, BRUBECK SHOWCASE OWN STYLES

Saturday evening at the Universal Amphitheater, the show was stolen almost before it had begun. Given that Stan Getz was leading what may be the best of the countless quartets he has headed, and knowing that he would play selections from his recent five-star album, “Voyage,” with the same group, it came as no surprise that he offered, if one may coin a rating, a six-star performance.

Never has his tenor saxophone been the conveyor of more eloquent passion, more deftly controlled power. Moreover, in Kenny Barron he has a totally sympathetic accompanist, and a pianist of such virtuousity that on “I Thought About You” Getz withdrew after the first chorus, letting Barron take over for a masterful display of harmonic invention and dynamic diversity.

Hardly less startling were the bass lines of George Mraz, who provided the sole backing in Getz’s first chorus of “Yesterdays.” Victor Feldman’s tune “Seven Steps to Heaven,” with a well-devised drum interlude by Victor Lewis, seemed like the perfect finale, but Getz chose to close with the elegiac Billy Strayhorn melody, “Blood Count,” bringing a flawless hour to a delicate denouement.

In the unlikely event that anyone found Getz too low key, Dizzy Gillespie provided the logical contrast. The extent of one’s satisfaction with a Gillespie show nowadays varies in inverse proportion to the years one has spent listening to him. For anyone who recalls hearing him as the immensely innovative bebop pioneer, it may be less than enthralling to hear his saxophonist making the baritone sound like an emotionally disturbed soprano, or watching him dismember a flute in mid-solo. Gillespie himself still “introduces the men in the band” (to each other), and it still gets a laugh after 30 years.

His trumpet? Well, after the saxophone and the piano and the bass solos you might hear a chorus or two, but nowhere, not even on “Night in Tunisia,” was he featured exclusively or extensively. There were still some moments that recalled the grandeur of yore, and his record of past accomplishments does entitle him to coast, but it also justifies the listener’s sense of being left unsated.

The Dave Brubeck Quartet closed. They were dressed formally, and why not? This was music for a tuxedo function. Some of it was soporific (a long, ruminative keyboard impression of Japan), some reasonably lively, especially when Chris Brubeck put down his electric bass and roared through a widely unshackled bass trombone solo on Fats Waller’s “Black and Blue.”

Bobby Militello, who handled the bass during this number, spent the rest of his time playing flute--quite inspiringly on a 5/4 blues--and alto sax. On the latter, during “Take Five,” he went on the kind of note-chasing rampage in which the late Paul Desmond, who knew that less can be more, would never have indulged.