JAZZ REVIEW : Jam Session Rules Upstairs Room

Is a jam session enough for a jazz audience? Do improvising musicians owe their audience nothing more than a set of spontaneous variations on standard songs?

The question came to mind Friday night at the Upstairs Room at Martoni’s Restaurant in Hollywood. A quintet consisting of tenor saxophonist Pete Christlieb, trumpeter Sal Marquez, pianist Kei Akagi, bassist John Leftwich and drummer Ralph Penland performed a set which consisted almost entirely of predictable jazz lines, called on the spot, with no sense of organization or prior preparation.

Each piece proceeded exactly the same way, with an opening statement of the theme, individual improvisations by each of the players, exchanges with Penland drum solos and a closing chorus of the theme. The only slight variations from this procedure came when Marquez pulled out a chart or two from his Bebop Revisited ensemble.

Despite this, each player, for the most part, performed well individually. Christlieb was hard-swinging and articulate, especially on a samba-based version of “Passion Flower.” Marquez’s be-bop chops were in good form on “Skylark,” and Leftwich did remarkable things with a solo on “Confirmation.”

Penland was, as always, both a dependable support performer and a solid soloist. But Akagi’s tendency to push all his variations, regardless of the original themes, into the outer limits of dissonance soon became wearyingly predictable; in addition, his rhythmic articulation ebbed and flowed--swinging one moment, awkward the next.

Individual high points aside, however, it was difficult, as a listener, not to expect more focus from performers of this stature. Pure improvisation surely has its place, but jazz is a collective as well as a solo art, and it would be wrong to confuse that purity--as this program did--with the casual chaos and audience-excluding introversion of a jam session.