Jazz : Larry Coryell--Slightly Adrift at McCabe’s

Guitarist Larry Coryell, a 25-year contemporary jazz veteran, has worked solo in person and on record. It’s an environment he’s proven he enjoys. He’s also been in some memorable bands--among them the Free Spirits (one of the first jazz/rock small groups), Gary Burton’s quartet and Coryell/Mouzon, with powerhouse drummer Alphonse Mouzon--and his most recent Muse recordings are quartet dates.

When Coryell appeared unaccompanied Saturday night at McCabe’s, one missed the structure and unity an ensemble afforded, and so, it seemed, did the guitarist. His show, though it had moments that moved a listener, overall lacked focus, and at its nadir was uneven and unsettling.

Looking sharp in a silver-gray double breasted suit that matched the color of his hair, Coryell got off to a good start. “Opus One,” a New Age-ish work, was built on repeating-then-shifting chordal arpeggios that shimmered like concentric circles formed when a stone crashes through still water.

On “Summertime,” he coaxed chunky chords and single-note melody lines from his Ovation 12-string instrument that were redolent of the aching sweetness that is this song’s character.

Then came “Peppy Spanish Piece 2,” a Flamenco-tinged number where, at one point, low rumbling chords led to series of speeding, muddy-sounding lines that found Coryell trying to squeeze notes in places they just wouldn’t fit. Later, playing a Gibson 6-string hollow-body model, he engaged in similar freneticism on “ ‘Round Midnight,” following a tasteful melody reading and handsome solo with an up-tempo, manic coda that was completely out of place. His arrangement of melodies from “Rhapsody in Blue” also suffered from overkill.

The guitarist’s treatments of Ravel’s “Pavanne for a Dead Princess,” done straight and respectfully, and Mercer Ellington’s “Things Ain’t What They Used to Be” had more of the continuity and musicality of which Coryell is capable.