JAZZ REVIEW : ‘Bebop’: 40 Years of Musical Idiom

“Bebop Revisited,” presented Tuesday at Avery Fisher Hall here, could as well have been called “Bebop Still Visiting.” Like the man who came to dinner, this idiom dropped in on jazz in the mid-1940s and never went away.

How thoroughly it has been absorbed into the mainstream of modern music, and how indomitably some of its pioneers have survived, was intermittently demonstrated during the evening. Produced by the jazz critic Ira Gitler, the program also included a few of the younger artists who absorbed the bop essence as it became the lingua franca of jazz.

A succinct set by trumpeter Red Rodney and alto saxophonist Phil Woods established the mood for the evening. Like many of the participants, Rodney and the pianist in this group, Duke Jordan, once played with Charlie Parker, whose shadow hung heavily over the hall. Dizzy Gillespie, in the first of two brief appearances, was added toward the end of the set, and if his glory years are somewhere behind him, he still did justice, with muted and open horn, to one of his earliest compositions, “Groovin’ High.”

The teaming of be-bop pianists Walter Davis Jr. and Barry Harris failed to jell. Instead of sounding well contrasted, they were ill-matched, with the flamboyant Davis overpowering the fine-tuned Harris, and the rhythm section (Ron Carter on bass and Roy Haynes on drums) overpowering both. Everything came alive a little more vividly after intermission, with the first and still foremost be-bop vibraphonist, Milt Jackson, in partnership with the mature and harmonically imaginative tenor saxophonist Jimmy Heath (who used to be known as “Little Bird”). Gillespie appeared again, in better form with his old band theme “I Waited For You” followed by a brisk re-examination of his old minor blues piece “Birks’ Works.”

The rhythm section backing this segment was subtler and more adventurous than those that have preceded it, with pianist Cedar Walton expressing himself in a post-bop language, helped by the bassist Bob Cranshaw and drummer Mickey Roker.

Finally, Art Blakey took to the stage with his current edition of the Jazz Messengers, now enlarged to three saxophones, trumpet, trombone and three rhythm section members.

The drummer, now 70, never ceases to produce new discoveries.

Almost a decade ago he astonished the jazz world by introducing Wynton and Branford Marsalis. Today he has at least three promising and relatively youthful soloists: The percussively original Benny Green on piano; the virtuosic if occasionally extravagant trombonist Frank Lacey, now Blakey’s musical director, whose interpretation of J. J. Johnson’s “Lament” was a tour de force, and the trumpeter Brian Lynch, well known for his work with the Toshiko Akiyoshi orchestra.

Ranging from the hard bop of the 1950s to the modal sounds of the ‘70s, Blakey’s team brought the evening to a climax, although to everyone’s surprise, on the closing “Night in Tunisia,” a Gillespie standard, Dizzy did not reappear.