With Liberating Musical Approach, Freeman Is Mesmerizing on the Sax

Jet-lagged, minus his favorite horn and faced with an ailing sound system, saxman Chico Freeman nonetheless turned out some of the most exciting music Elario’s has seen in months.

As fireworks colored the La Jolla sky outside, Freeman lit into the opening night’s first set on the Fourth of July, stretching three songs over more than an hour.

Freeman is equally adept at a variety of musical approaches, including the abstract, avant-garde ideas he explored in depth as part of the New York loft jazz scene of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Inspired by his open-minded approach, a local rhythm section of Bob Magnusson (bass), Jim Plank (drums) and Randy Porter (piano) took risks they usually don’t take while backing more conservative jazz masters at the club.

Freeman had lost his favorite tenor sax in Oakland last week, and had trouble with a sticking valve on its replacement. A finicky stage monitor shorted out during the first set, and Freeman complained that he couldn’t hear Porter at all.

Despite the distractions, Freeman was mesmerizing, opening with two songs on soprano sax, bobbing and weaving like a funky snake charmer as he played line after exotic line.

First came “There Is No Greater Love,” which began with Magnusson and Freeman riffing off each other before transitioning into the tune’s signature melody. Porter contributed a moody undercurrent of subtle chord combinations.

Freddie Hubbard’s “Little Sunflower” was next, with a gem of an introduction from Magnusson, a blend of delicate vibrato, speedy bursts of notes and moody, sliding octave intervals.

Freeman blew up a storm around the song’s medium tempo groove, sometimes staying close the melody, sometimes straying into fiery territory miles away, often calling to mind the late John Coltrane’s extended soprano meditations.

Coltrane’s “Mr. P.C.” began with haunting valve clicks and gusts of breath before Freeman swung his tenor into the music, making the horn talk with squeaks, screams, trills and wails that seemed to capture some of the frenzied chaos of a modern metropolis like New York City, his home.

Freeman spent a good portion of the second set on tenor sax, beginning with a ballad treated in relatively straightforward fashion, continuing with Coltrane’s “Lonnie’s Lament,” to which he added his own vibrant personality.

Aside from a frenzied touring schedule, which took Freeman to Oakland, Santa Cruz and Montreal during the past week, he’s been busy recording--two albums with his father Earl, a saxophonist who came up with Sun Ra and Dexter Gordon, plus an album with his new funk band Brainstorm, due in October. He is also a regular in pianist John Hicks’ band.

Freeman appears at Elario’s nightly through Sunday.