JAZZ REVIEW : Slow Start, Racy Ride With Pullen-Adams 4

The Don Pullen-George Adams Quartet opened at 8:45 p.m. Thursday at Catalina’s, playing “All the Things You Are.” After two minutes it stopped. Then started. Then stopped and started again. And again. Not until some 20 minutes of this did it become clear that the audience was being subjected to a sound check--hardly an auspicious beginning for the evening.

Finally, at 9:30, the group got under way seriously, taking about 80 minutes to play four selections. The men have been together seven years off and on, though saxophonist Adams has played even longer with Gil Evans. Except for the bassist, Cameron Brown, the men are alumni of the Charles Mingus band, but they have taken his innovations several steps further.

At the piano, Pullen alternated between stripped-down essentials and Cecil Taylor frenzies, with occasional blues overtones. During an unaccompanied solo on the final number, a Monk medley that lasted at least half an hour, he ran the gamut from mild modality to wild outbursts, during which the instrument seemed to acquire 176 keys. If his astonishing agility were tempered by a touch of dynamic relief, his performances would be far more accessible.

Adams, playing his own “Mr. Smoothie” and Pullen’s “We’ve Been Here All the Time,” offered mood-swinging starbursts of tenor chaos, from squeaks to honks to impressions of Sonny Rollins having a nightmare. In his own “Time for Sobriety” he switched from tenor to soprano sax, of which he is clearly a master, then briefly offered sustained tones on flute during Brown’s limber bass solo.

Dashing, crashing, numbing, thumbing its nose at convention, drawing on a rich lode of experience from the blues-driven basics to the edge of beyond, the group is as calming as a roller-coaster ride, but you don’t look to this genre to soothe the soul. In particular Dannie Richmond’s drumming, instead of complementing the steady pulse of Cameron Brown, tended to force the beat and aggravated the volume problem.

The Pullen-Adams foursome may often be unnerving, but it’s rarely uninteresting. However, given its longevity, the occasional disorganization and inability to make succinct statements is surprising. The group closes Sunday.