Jazz Reviews : A Creative Gardony at Grand Street Bar

Laszlo Gardony has the look of a mad scientist--a shock of wild, unruly hair; round, overmagnified spectacles; a rumpled shirt, and an arms-akimbo interaction with the piano. But he sure can play.

Friday night at the Grand Street Bar in his first Los Angeles appearance, the Hungarian jazz musician made the most of somewhat less-than-perfect circumstances. Working with a new bassist, Mary Ann McSweeney, in a room filled with TGIF revelers, Gardony stuck to his guns and played a set of attractive original material from his new Antilles Records release.

The decision may not have delighted the noisemakers who only wanted to hear background music, but it was a wise creative choice. Most of Gardony’s pieces had a distinctly atmospheric quality--not quite Impressionistic, but strongly suggestive of cinematiclike images. Many were based on percussive ostinato chording juxtaposed against rapid-fire melodic curlicues.

On the few occasions when Gardony whipped out a pure jazz improvisation--”Elf Dance” was a good example--he demonstrated strong mainstream jazz skills. Pieces such as “Sunrise” and the rhapsodic “Anne’s Dream” underscored his classical training. After six years of living in the United States, mostly in the Boston area, he clearly has found an equitable balance between his academic background and the street rhythms of America.

Despite her relative unfamiliarity with the music, McSweeney played a strong supportive role. Her brief solo moments on “The Legend of Tsumi”--sliding up and down a modal scale--provided the perfect counter to Gardony’s bombastic chording. The other member of the trio, San Francisco drummer Ken Wollesen, contrasted sturdy time-keeping with an unusual array of percussive zips, creaks, squeaks and rattles.