A Wide Open ‘Broadly Broadway’ at Bowl : Jazz: Cleo Laine and Mel Torme harmonize in performances that recall beloved show tunes--and then some.

“Broadly Broadway” was the title of an extravaganza presented Friday and Saturday at the Hollywood Bowl, with Mel Torme, Cleo Laine, and the L.A. Philharmonic conducted by John Dankworth.

How Broadway was it? Not broad enough to take in Irving Berlin or Jerome Kern; a more apt title might have been “Largely Loesser” or “Greatly Gershwin.” How broad was it? Well, broad enough to include songs from Hollywood, and one or two that had no true show image (Dankworth’s witty, boppish “Birdsong,” rearranged to include Torme, and Laine’s “Fine and Mellow,” an old Billie Holiday blues).

Title relevance aside, the teaming of these singers was a marriage made in box office heaven (almost 13,000 turned out Friday and the Saturday figure was a couple thousand higher). More valuably, Torme and Laine synchronized perfectly, especially in the two-part harmony on duet numbers such as “I Wish I Were In Love Again.”

Torme was represented on four levels: Vocally, as pianist (briefly), as drummer (in a sort of “Sing Sing Sing” routine with Dankworth), and, unbeknown to the audience, as arranger. It was he who fashioned the orchestrations on the “Guys And Dolls” medley, “Soliloquy,” “A Lovely Way to Spend an Evening” and several others. The man is just indecently overtalented.

As for Laine, she remains the consummate pop singer with jazz sensitivity, her reedy, pure high notes contrasting with the cavernous low tones, her dramatic sense never overlapping into melodrama.

Dankworth was ubiquitous as clarinetist, alto saxophonist (paired with Torme in “Bye Bye Blackbird”) and arranger. In the small group he headed were two impressive soloists, Larry Koomse on guitar and Ray Loeckle on saxes and flute.

The program might be characterized as safe; there was no chance-taking in the repertoire, and with one exception the tunes were from 26 years old (Sondheim’s “Everybody Says Don’t”) to 76 (Handy’s “St. Louis Blues,” to which Laine applied an updated beat). Ironically, the solitary new work, a Cy Coleman song from “City of Angels,” had the same title as a 1934 Bing Crosby hit, “With Every Breath I Take.”

The only expendable segment was a medley of those chest-puffing ain’t-show-biz-grand songs that have long since outlived any usefulness they may have had: “Hooray for Hollywood,” “That’s Entertainment.” Mercifully, “There’s No Business Like Show Business” was omitted.

The problems with the sound Friday left this listener wondering whether it is legal to commit assault and battery on an engineer. Somebody in that booth had mastered the task of taking all the Philharmonic violins, violas, cellis and basses, and making them sound like a string quartet. Torme was minimally audible for the first couple of tunes. Still, better an evening of total musical class, inadequately monitored, than a soiree of perfectly amplified rap.