Baritone Sax Is in Good Hands With Nick Brignola

Though difficult to master, the baritone sax can produce amazing sounds in the right hands. Unfortunately, few jazz players have chosen to make it their instrument of choice.

Baritone sax player Nick Brignola’s appearance this Saturday at 8 p.m. at the San Diego Convention Center is a rare opportunity to hear what this horn can do.

The concert is the second in the three-part “Salute to the Masters” series being presented by the San Diego Jazz Society. Brignola’s show will be a tribute to jazz saxophonist Charlie “Bird” Parker, generally considered one of the half a dozen most important jazz artists of the century.

Brignola began his musical education as a schoolboy clarinetist, and switched to alto sax as he began to get serious about jazz.

“Then I found the baritone and that was it,” Brignola said. “I was able to express my personality more.”

“Bird” was known for the lightning be-bop lines he invented on alto, and one might expect that Brignola would have a tough time rekindling Parker’s memory on the larger, more air-consuming baritone.

“No matter what instrument I pick up, it translates the music inside me,” Brignola said. “The instrument is just a vehicle. I feel I can play different horns with equal facility, but I’ve worked hard at it. I may be one of few who can do it. It’s hard, rather like a trumpet player picking up a tuba.”

Brignola, who names baritone sax predecessors Harry Carney and Pepper Adams as influences, has long been a favorite of jazz purists. A New York Times writer last year referred to his “full, hard-bottomed sound and . . . urgent, swaggering attack.” In various jazz polls, he’s consistently named by critics, fans and peers as the top baritone player.

During the ‘50s, Brignola leaned toward the West Coast cool-jazz sound being pioneered by players such as Paul Desmond, Stan Getz and Bud Shank. “It was easy to learn--palatable music,” he said. But when he sought something more challenging, he became a be-bop convert, with Parker as his main guru. (Parker died when Brignola was still a teen-ager, and the two never met.)

“On a Different Level,” Brignola’s new recording, should be in stores any day. It pits Brignola with drummer Jack DeJohnette, pianist Kenny Barron and bassist Dave Holland.

“The improvisations were going to be very esoteric, so we decided to use standards so listeners could hang their hats on it,” he said. “There’s music by Ornette Coleman, Charles Mingus, Jerome Kern, Duke Ellington, Tadd Dameron. It was designed to let me do my thing like I do on the job. Some cuts are a little longer than normal air play time.”

The lack of great commercial success doesn’t bother Brignola, who said he is lucky to sell 15,000 or 20,000 copies of his recordings. “Pure jazz was never meant to appeal to the masses. Anybody selling over 40,000 records would be suspect.”

Saturday night, Brignola, who plans to bring both soprano and baritone saxes, will be supported by pianist Frank Strazzeri--whose meandering improvisations sometimes call to mind Thelonious Monk--plus trumpeter Jimmy Noone, drummer Tootie Heath and bassist John Leitham. The material will lean heavily on Parker’s own compositions and his versions of popular jazz standards.

The new album by San Diego’s own Checkfield, “A View from the Bridge,” is the strongest yet from the duo of Ron Satterfield and John Archer. The pair, both experts with mixing boards, synthesizers, guitars, vocals and keyboards, brought in top players, including San Diegans Peter Sprague, John Rekevics, Mark Hunter, John Leftwich and Duncan Moore, plus out-of-towners such as guitarist Pat Kelley, flutist Steve Kujala and violinist Darol Anger. Where earlier albums from Checkfield were technically polished but lacking in punch, the new project is more dynamic.

Out of 11 songs, all composed by Checkfield, “Conjuring” stands out, with its African and tropical rhythms providing the backbeat for Kujala’s soothing flute. Anger’s soaring violin lines are impressive on several cuts. The album includes more singing than past Checkfield efforts. Archer and Satterfield have serviceable voices, but their lyrics sometimes get too singsong and cute. The album is due to be in stores next week.

San Diego flutist Lori Bell and her musical soul mate, L.A. pianist Dave Mackay, play Words & Music Bookstore in Hillcrest Friday and Saturday nights, and the Salmon House restaurant on Mission Bay on Sunday night. They’ll work as a duo Friday and Saturday and be joined by drummer Barry Farrar and bassist Bill Andrews on Sunday. Bell and Mackay are shopping around a demo tape that includes five new songs in the more commercial, light-jazz direction they began with the song “The Goose Is Loose” from their last album, “Take Me to Brazil.” At Words & Music, their repertoire will include several originals, plus music by George Gershwin, Michel Legrand and Charlie Parker. Bell’s song “Waltz for Joe,” written for San Diego pianist Joe Azarello, is included on a new Japanese release from local pianist Mike Wofford titled “All Alone.”

RIFFS: Open Channel, the new electric-jazz band fronted by San Diego guitarist Jim Storey and including top local saxophonist Steve Feierabend, plays the Del Mar Hilton this Friday and Saturday nights and again next weekend. Vocalist Cath Eckert will perform with the band and may join it permanently if the chemistry is right. . . . Sunday night from 7 to 8, the Claude Bolling Big Band is featured on “Le Jazz Club,” the French program imported to KSDS-FM (88.3). . . . Jazz artists such as local pianist Glenn Horiuchi have incorporated authentic Oriental influences into their music. Friday night at 8, the real thing can be heard at UC San Diego’s Price Center Theatre, as Silk and Lace, the orchestra of the Chinese Music Society of North America, performs several classical and modern Chinese works.