JAZZ REVIEW : Oscar Peterson, Benny Carter Share Bowl Bill

Oscar Peterson and Benny Carter, who between them have won enough awards to fill the Grand Canyon, picked up a couple more Wednesday when they shared the bill at the Hollywood Bowl.

This was, we were solemnly informed, Oscar Peterson-Ray Brown Day. Reunited recently for a few dates, the Canadian pianist and the bass virtuoso, who toured the world together for 17 years, were joined on this occasion by Jeff Hamilton, the Los Angeles-based drummer whose intelligent backing and spirited solo work (particularly a passage on brushes) met Peterson’s customarily high standards for sidemen.

Looking almost alarmingly large, Peterson showed no diminution either of the power he brings to his tear-up tempos or the ravishing splendor of his original works, among which “Gentle Waltz” and “Love Ballade” stood out.

Peterson’s technical command has long been a given, yet it is an ongoing delight to hear him play a funky blues (there were two in this set) or an unaccompanied number that suddenly breaks into a stride passage. Brown, always the stalwart, is Peterson’s logical counterpart.

Only the closing not-quite-Ellington medley of Strayhorn’s “Lush Life” and the Juan Tizol-Ellington “Caravan” sounded perfunctory. Peterson has been using them too long, and “Caravan,” performed at tempo di bravado, was about as soulful as cold halibut.

After intermission, Benny Carter took his 17-piece orchestra through a set that practically defined big band jazz in his most unaffected mainstream mode. To prove, as he put it, that this was an all-star band, he gave a solo to every horn player, and to bassist John Clayton, in the opening “How High the Moon.”

As often happens, Carter was almost too generous to his men, yet the band was so strong in solo power that complaints would seem churlish. Oscar Brashear on trumpet, Buster Cooper on trombone, and Jeff Clayton, whose Parkerish alto sax was an unexpected treat in “Cotton Tail,” could not be faulted; yet it was Carter’s own luminous alto, each note a pearl of melodic wisdom, that held the hour together as he reminded us of his elegant compositions, from “Southside Samba” to “Souvenir” and the enchanting “Evening Star.”