JAZZ REVIEW : HUTCHERSON EXPLORES MAINSTREAM

Bobby Hutcherson, who opened Thursday at Concerts by the Sea and will be on hand through Sunday, is the most technically adroit and hardest swinging vibraphonist of his generation.

During the 1960s, when he came to prominence and began winning jazz polls, he delved into avant-garde experiments and showed a new direction by making extensive use of the marimba.

If his performance opening night was typical, he seems to have retrenched from those adventurous positions, relying now on the vibes and suggesting a latter-day Milt Jackson with post-bebop overtones. Perhaps this is a temporary situation related to his recent appearance, in an acting and singing role, in the movie “ ‘Round Midnight.” In any event, Hutcherson’s return to the mainstream is by no means a musical step backward, since his creativity within the parameters he now sets for himself is quite extraordinary.

Opening with “Some Day My Prince Will Come,” he brought to his jazz-waltz treatment a phenomenal vitality, tempered by long tremolo passages used as bridges between choruses. His up-tempo virtuosity was even better displayed in the early John Coltrane work “Mr. P.C.” Completing the set were a ballad, “Young and Foolish,” in which his dynamic subtlety came to the fore, and a fast, slightly Latin “Star Eyes,” in which he made all-too-brief use of his four mallet technique.

Backing Hutcherson were Lew Matthews, playing an electric grand piano that achieved a far cleaner sound than most artificial keyboards; the formidable John Heard on bass, and the dependable Larance Marable on drums. This kind of no-nonsense music has been in such short supply in recent years at the Redondo Beach room that the arrival of such a talented foursome was as welcome as the low turnout was regrettable. What does Hutcherson have to do to fill the club--sing and tell jokes?