JAZZ REVIEWS : DAVIS, JARREAU: JAZZ GONE FAR ASTRAY

It was art for commerce’s sake Friday night as singer Al Jarreau and trumpeter Miles Davis, beginning a four-night engagement at the Universal Amphitheatre, demonstrated just how far talent will stray for commercial appeal.

Both Davis and Jarreau, who shared the billing but not the stage, are exceptional talents who have proven themselves time and again in jazz and its fusion fringes. Indeed, Davis helped create the fusion form, and Jarreau was able to lend it vocal definition.

But by now, Davis has been so consumed by it, and Jarreau has moved so far to pop, that to consider either a viable jazz talent today is folly.

Surrounded by an octet of two keyboardists, two reed men, guitar, bass, drums and percussion, Davis, face to the floor like a man looking for a dropped coin, stalked the stage in his inimitable manner, playing in short bursts and flurries during his hourlong opening set. Though a couple of muted moments were particularly good and his overall tone solid, his efforts were all but obscured by the band’s persistent din.

Oddly enough, his musical commercialism failed to hit its target. The loudest cheers from the nearly full house came not for his trumpet playing or the band’s unrelenting funk, but for his removal of a gold lame jacket.

Since Jarreau removed not one piece of clothing during his enthusiastic performance, it is safe to assume that the wild cheering throughout his lengthy set was for his singing. Long eclipsed in the field of vocal gymnastics by Bobby McFerrin, Jarreau has targeted--and won--an audience interested in pop-funk. Jarreau, blessed with a superb voice, performed his music very well. That it is unchallenging music of little artistic worth is his business.

It is just sad that a singer so capable of singing quality material--like Lenny Welch’s “Since I Fell For You,” the swinging waltz “Alonzo” and Paul Desmond’s “Take Five,” each of which he thankfully included in his set--chooses to perform such drivel as “Get My Boogie Down” and “High Crime.”

The man with the horn and the man with the voice, as they were so modestly billed, return to the Universal Amphitheatre on New Year’s Eve. Perhaps they should resolve to live up to the billing.