JAZZ REVIEWS : BENNIE WALLACE

Tenor saxophonist Bennie Wallace has finally made his Los Angeles debut. It is ironic that after a triumphant tour of Japan and before a full week’s booking in Seattle, Wallace only had a single night here, Friday at the Palace.

A thin line separates the eclectic from the erratic. Wallace straddled the line. Ferocious intensity alternates with long, complex ideas that leap all over the horn. Yet he’s flexible both in tone and mood, as he showed in the schmaltzy 1944 tune “Twilight Time.”

Wallace is given to long, unaccompanied outbursts. His cohorts--Mitch Watkins on guitar, Jay Anderson on bass and Jeff Hirshfield on drums--opted for volume and vigor. Watkins used a pedal and a guitar synthesizer for effects that occasionally threatened to cross the threshold of pain.

Except for “Brilliant Corners,” which captured the quixotic essence of Thelonious Monk’s tune, the quartet’s repertoire was composed of Wallace originals: a fast blues, a variation on the chords of “Stella by Starlight” and “St. Expedito,” a humorous set of solos built on two chords.

Whether his mood is lush and lyrical or implacably extrovert, Wallace is his own man. He has been compared to every saxophonist from Coleman Hawkins to Eric Dolphy, but has distilled out of these influences a personality that is quite distinct.