Jazz : Grappelli’s Ageless Paean to Creativity

Age may not have quite taken the crown in Friday night’s heavyweight championship fight, but it was a no-contest winner the same evening at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano.

French jazz violinist Stephane Grappelli, whose smooth cheeks were almost as cherubic as George Foreman’s, gave a performance that was overflowing with enthusiasm and sheer love of life. If his 83 years demonstrated anything, it was the too-rarely heard message that creativity--when properly nurtured--has the capacity for continuous growth.

Looking for all the world like a favorite old uncle, comfortably dressed in a brightly patterned blue shirt, a navy cardigan and checked slacks, Grappelli’s vigorous playing belied the easy-chair serenity of his visual presentation. Time and again, he started numbers with ornate little classical-sounding cadenzas, only to suddenly shift gears into irresistibly foot-tapping swing rhythms.

Some pieces--”Honeysuckle Rose” was one--were miniature masterpieces, complete with verse, changes of tempo and key, and climaxing with an ensemble “shout” chorus, all in less than four minutes. Grappelli’s solos had a similar sense of mastery, sometimes brightly technical, at other times bubbling with Gypsy ornamentation.

The minimalist trio included Bucky Pizzarelli on guitar and John Burr on bass. Grappelli could hardly have asked for better players. Pizzarelli’s hard-driving, block chording--a virtual lost art with many of today’s guitarists--on pieces like “Pick Yourself Up” and “It Had to Be You” had the urgent drive and swing of a big band brass section. Burr was always where he needed to be, his bass line filled with big, fat bottom notes, his solos bringing the perspective of a high-technique, contemporary improvisational style to a straight-ahead jazz setting.

Appropriately, the evening’s repertoire--classics such as “Blue Moon,” “Making Whoopee” and “Just One of Those Things”--bristled with resonant associations with the icons of Grappelli’s past, his Django Reinhardt connection, his own virtual invention of a lush, personal, highly ornamented, but intensely swinging jazz violin style. Like every other element in this marvelous performance, the songs were perfectly in sync with Grappelli’s unquenchably creative vision.