JAZZ REVIEW : Pianist Leviev Dominates a Violin-Less Katoomi

What was billed Tuesday at Le Cafe was Katoomi; what was heard turned out to be the Milcho Leviev Trio.

Karen Briggs, the violinist who gives the first syllable of her name to the group, was absent owing to illness in her family; drummer Tootie Heath and pianist Leviev, the other two-thirds of that hybrid name, were also limited by the presence of a substitute bassist, albeit a splendid one, Tony Dumas.

Leviev, who recently played in his native Bulgaria with Katoomi, is a pianist and composer of awesome talent. Tuesday he seemed determined to make up for Briggs’ absence, flaunting his technique to a sometimes disturbing degree. By overplaying his hands, he created a set that had flashes of sheer brilliance, along with unsettled and unsettling passages in which beauty gave way to bombast and ingenuity to inconsistency.

When the trio worked as a unit, notably in the bop standards “Night in Tunisia” and “Anthropology,” it was superb. But too often Leviev wandered off on his own, or disguised such songs as “Emily” so heavily that nothing remained of their classic charm. It took him almost three minutes to plow through his dirge-like first chorus of “Prelude to a Kiss.”

Dumas was consistently imaginative in his long, sometimes chorded solos. Heath, often playing gently with brushes, was a model of fastidious percussive support.

One can only hope that Katoomi, when reassembled, will give a more rounded idea of what Leviev is capable of both as leader and soloist.