JAZZ REVIEW : Holdsworth Shows Coltrane Influence

Alan Holdsworth is a frustrated tenor saxophonist. He’s often described how much he’d love to find a way to make his guitar sing with the fluid mobility of a reed instrument.

In his opening set at Santa Monica’s At My Place Tuesday night, Holdsworth actually came close to achieving his goal. Playing an electronic guitar synthesizer, he soared through a series of extended, John Coltrane-like improvisations. The resemblance to tenor saxophone style was heightened by Holdsworth’s use of a plastic-tubed wind controller to bend and shape the guitar synth lines.

Most of the original pieces were tailored to provide a foundation of rhythmic and harmonic support for the soloing of Holdsworth, pianist Billy Childs, bassist Jimmy Johnson and drummer Chad Wackerman. Compositions like “Funnels,” “Devil Take the Hindmost” and “Three Sheets to the Wind” were little more than skeletal constructs--perfect for improvisation, but almost completely lacking any real melodic identities.

In a group as rich with contemporary soloists as this one was, extended improvising had its own strengths. Still, there were moments when the almost incessant flow of high speed, multinote soloing tended to become wearying. It was a welcome respite when Childs broke through during his solo on “Devil” with a set of funk-drenched variations on contemporary style. And Wackerman’s precise drumming--which skillfully underlined both the written and the improvised lines--was a joy to hear.

But the performance never quite coalesced into the ensemble expression that it should have. As good as Holdsworth’s Coltrane-like playing was, one wonders how much better it might have been if supported by the kind of stimulating material and group interaction that characterized the best of Coltrane’s work.