JAZZ REVIEW : Albright’s Dancing Saxophone

The next time alto saxophonist Gerald Albright works Concerts by the Sea, the management of the Redondo Beach nightclub would do well to remove the seats and open the floor to dancing.

Not that Albright’s music is so compelling that people just can’t help themselves from jumping up and stomping; rather, it is that this music is designed more for dancing than for serious listening.

In his opening set early in the four-night run that ended Sunday, Albright’s quartet of ersatz funkmeisters plodded through a series of tunes that bashed and banged. The rhythms, with relentlessly heavy-handed reminders of the two- and the four-beat and the pop-pop-pop of bassist Sam Simms, were as predictable as if they were being made by a metronome. There was no groove; there was a rut. There was no swing or sway, no lilt. Even on a couple of ballads, drummer Donnell Spencer Jr. couldn’t resist applying rigid rhythmic patterns. Persistent is not the most becoming accolade for a drummer to earn.

Rhythm notwithstanding, there were occasional moments of quality music making. Between the two keyboardists (Bobby Lyle and David Swanson), there were some wonderful orchestral textures that helped soften the hard-edged music.

Albright relied on a series of cliched groans, honks and whines to propel his predictable improvisations. Though the original melodic statements were made with a sense of clarity, the reverb was enough to make him sound as if he were playing from inside a shower stall.