Handy Group Earns High Marks for Originality : Jazz: Four violinists and a three-piece rhythm section play a striking set of standards.

Give John Handy four stars for imagination and effort. And somewhat less for execution.

Class--the group he has been carefully nurturing for the last seven years or so--is an ensemble that is unique in the history of jazz. Friday night at Long Beach’s Birdland West, the four violinists and three-piece rhythm section (in addition to Handy) played and sang a strikingly orchestrated set of jazz standards.

Handy’s charts called for each of the violinists--Julie Carter, Sandi Poindexter, Tarika Lewis and Yehudit Lieberman--to play, sing and, on occasion, do both at the same time. On the many blues in the set--especially “Centerpiece,” “All Blues” and “Stormy Monday Blues”--the electrified string sound blended with Handy’s alto to produce a fascinating variation on the timbres of a jazz saxophone section.

Pieces like “Funny Valentine,” with its particularly well-crafted arrangement, called for the violinists to sing complex Lambert, Hendricks & Ross-like vocal lines. They were performed, for the most part, with crisp accuracy.

Curiously, however, the string playing was less on the mark. The instrumental balance veered in and out of sync, and there was far too much quavery intonation.

To his credit, Handy wore all his musical hats--leader, front-line soloist, singer, ensemble player--with his usual flare. His solo work, notably on “Stormy Monday” and “Funny Valentine,” gleamed and glistened with the twists and turns of the be-bop style that is so much at the heart of his playing.

Buddy Carter added several hard-rocking, Joe Williams-styled vocals and the rhythm section of pianist Percy Scott, bassist Tim Huff and drummer Dexter Story laid down a sturdy metric foundation. But the real star of the evening was Handy’s courageous and determined effort to try something new and unusual.