JAZZ REVIEW : Cunninghams Add Pyrotechnics at Biltmore

Carrying the torch for jazz singing may not have quite the high visibility of running with the Olympic flame, but it’s every bit as important.

Need some evidence? Check out the stunning work of the husband and wife vocal team of Don and Alicia Cunningham. Tuesday night at the Biltmore Hotel’s Grand Avenue Bar they not only kept the fire burning, they ignited a high energy creative conflagration.

Working with an intensity that nearly exploded out of the Grand Avenue’s small performing stage, the Cunninghams invested everything they sang with a scorchingly hot fervor. Among the highlights: A joyous romp through the serpentine line of Charlie Parker’s “Confirmation”; a delightfully humorous reading of Louis Jordan’s uptown classic, “Ain’t Nobody Here But Us Chickens”; a beautifully harmonized version of “ ‘Round Midnight”; and a quick, but lush lope across the changes of Duke Ellington’s “Cottontail.”

Don Cunningham’s scat singing appeared to owe a bit to Jon Hendricks, and perhaps a bit more to Dizzy Gillespie, but his superb ear for harmonic improvisation was clearly his own. Few singers bring such instrumental-styled drive and complexity to their soloing. Alicia Cunningham, the more reserved member of the duo, sounded lush and Sarah Vaughan-ish, especially on “But Beautiful,” but she had no difficulty focusing her voice or the crisp accents and sudden high notes of the up-tempo material.

The highlight of the set (and of the simultaneous broadcast on jazz radio station KKGO) came at the close, in a racehorse charge through Parker’s “Billy’s Bounce” dominated by an astoundingly articulate scat improvisation from Don Cunningham.

Dick Berk’s Quartet (with Berk on drums, Tad Weed on piano, Doug MacDonald on guitar and Jeff Littleton on bass) provided solid, swinging support. Weed’s solos, bristling with energy and technique, virtually served as a third front-line voice, and MacDonald’s guitar, as always, kept the blues alive. Berk and Littleton, one of the town’s most solid rhythm teams, added the kind of hard grooving foundation that was needed to keep the embers burning.