JAZZ REVIEW : Shaughnessy-Led Quintet Beats the Odds

The Room Upstairs, at Le Cafe in Sherman Oaks, is almost certainly the least capacious jazz club in town. This would not seem to qualify it as the ideal location for a five-piece band led by a drummer, yet Ed Shaughnessy’s quintet manages to beat the odds.

Shaughnessy is best known as a commanding and dynamic big-band drummer, and, although the sound in this intimate setting occasionally came close to overstepping the threshold of pain, more often than not he functioned as a powerful yet cohesive member of a flawless rhythm section.

He also knows when restraint is called for. Playing the Jerome Kern standard “Dearly Beloved,” he switched from sticks to brushes during John Leitham’s bass solo, then traded discrete eight bar solos with the horn players, Tom Peterson on tenor sax and Bruce Paulson on trombone.

The tenor-and-trombone front line blends comfortably, with most of the tunes introduced in unison or occasionally harmonized. Peterson, who composes much of the group’s material, demonstrated in his otherworldly tune “Another Time, Another Place” how much can be achieved with two-part harmony. Both men are vital, driving soloists; both are also capable of laid-back moments, as they showed in Horace Silver’s beguiling work “Peace.”

Man for man, this is about as strong a band individually as collectively. The pianist Tom Ranier was all over the keyboard, his ideas never letting up. Fast, funky and fierce by turn, he has developed impressively over the years.

Leitham may be the world’s fastest left-handed bass player. His section work is solid; his solos are consistently meaningful. Like so many of today’s younger masters of the upright bass he is technically adroit enough to play with guitar-like fluency.

Given these solo advantages, coupled with a library that rejects cliche standard tunes in favor of fresh material by Peterson, Randy Aldcroft and others, Shaughnessy can claim one of the most vigorously rewarding acoustic jazz groups now on the Southland horizon.