Silken Style on Ivories Wears Well for Flanagan

There are jazz pianists who make an immediate impression with their aggressive, personal styles, and those who touch you in more subtle ways. McCoy Tyner, with his percussive attack, and the often abstract explorations of Cecil Taylor fall in the first category. In the second are players like the silky smooth Oscar Peterson and the understated Tommy Flanagan, who opens a two-week run at Elario’s next Wednesday.

Flanagan’s San Diego appearances seem even more interesting because of the other players; George Mraz, who usually backs Flanagan on bass, canceled due to illness, but bass man Charlie Haden, just finishing his own dates at Elario’s, has volunteered to stay on with drummer Lawrence Marable to play behind Flanagan.

Since Haden and Flanagan have never worked together before, the combination promises some spontaneous moments. Flanagan, though, made it clear who’s the main attraction. He doesn’t expect the change in musicians to affect his sets much.

“I’m gonna play what I usually play,” he said by phone from his home in New York, as his wife and manager Diana listened in, occasionally adding information. “I expect we’ll get along and have a good time doing it. I like Lawrence. I worked with him the last time I was out there.”

Flanagan, whose long career has included time with masters such as Kenny Burrell, John Coltrane and Elvin Jones, leans heavily toward the classic songs of mainstream jazz.

“I’ve been doing the same composers I’ve always played,” Flanagan said. “Thad Jones, Tadd Dameron. . . . “

“Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie,” his wife added. “Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, George Gershwin. He has a very extensive repertoire. He won’t repeat himself.”

Flanagan, a strong composer in his own right, has been too busy to write new music lately, his wife said.

Though the songs remain largely the same, Flanagan believes his playing continues to grow.

“I think it has matured,” he said. “If you compare the version of ‘Chelsea Bridge’ I did in 1957 with the one from 1974, I knew the song better 20 years later. I think you can hear that. There’s more meaning, more feeling.”

Flanagan’s last record was recorded at the Village Vanguard in New York two years ago. A new album with Mraz and drummer Kenny Washington is due out in March.

As for the younger generation, Flanagan said he is not jazzed with many of the new crop of musicians. Pianist Mulgrew Miller is the only one who’s impressed him lately.

Flanagan’s career has included roughly 250 albums as a sideman and 25 as a leader, and through it all, he’s remained faithful to straight-ahead jazz.

Asked whether we’ll ever hear him play a synthesizer, he laughed. “No, you certainly won’t.”

At 2 p.m. every Sunday, 75-year-old trumpeter John Best, who has played with Glenn Miller, Artie Shaw and Benny Goodman, holds forth with clarinetist Bobby Gordon at Jazz Mine Records and CDs in La Jolla. Though Best is wheelchair-bound, his playing is far from handicapped.

“He has chops that won’t quit,” said Jazz Mine owner Walt Friederang.

Gordon, a well-known Dixieland player featured for years at Eddie Condon’s in New York, can be heard on a new album with the Hal Smith Trio. Besides the Sunday jams, Friederang presents occasional shows on Mondays and Tuesdays. A quartet featuring sax men Rod Cradit and Gary LeFebvre, with Gunner Biggs on bass and Jim Plank on drums, will be featured Feb. 21 at 8 p.m. The four San Diegans will play the music of sax legend Gerry Mulligan. Friederang’s store features rare jazz albums, including some of the 3,000 he was given by a former owner of KJAZ, the Bay Area radio station. Developers hope to replace the Jazz Mine with shops and condos, but until then, it is one of San Diego’s last bastions for pure jazz.

Los Angeles public television viewers will enjoy shows on Duke Ellington and Art Blakey Feb. 17, but the programs aren’t scheduled for viewing that night on KPBS, San Diego’s public TV station, which will, as usual, be airing a Metropolitan Opera performance. A KPBS official said San Diego jazz fans aren’t getting shorted. The Ellington show aired last summer and will play again in the next few months. The newer program on Blakey will also be shown in the coming months. KCET in Los Angeles simply arranged to show it before it was fed to the rest of the public TV network.

SHORT RIFFS: Vic’s in La Jolla features sax man Joe Marillo Mondays through Fridays, 5 p.m. to 8 p.m., and the Aubrey Fay Band Friday and Saturday nights starting at 9, through February . . . Internationally known jazz critic Stanley Dance, who lives in Vista, presents the fourth in the five-part jazz history lecture series at the Athenaeum in La Jolla at 7 p.m., Feb. 20. Dance, who collaborated with the late Duke Ellington on the master’s autobiography, will illustrate Ellington’s musical career with some of his best records. Admission is $11, or $9 for Athenaeum members. . . . Meanwhile, Dance’s wife, Helen, who produced some of Ellington’s albums, is writing the memoirs of her life in the jazz world for Smithsonian Institution Press. . . . The San Diego Jazz Festival’s Outreach Program begins Saturday night with concerts at 8 and 10 at the Educational Cultural Complex by Jimmy and Jeannie Cheatham. . . . KIFM hosts Tania Maria at the Bacchanal Sunday night at 8:30. . . . Lori Bell and Flight 7 are the only local jazz musicians included on KIFM’s February play list. . . . Drummer Art Blakey put on a great show Sunday during a rare San Diego appearance at the Bacchanal and a lot of people who should have been there weren’t. Promoter Rob Hagey said he sold only about half of the 550 tickets printed and took a loss on the show.