Jazz Reviews : Cunninghams Get a Workout at Lunaria

Don and Alicia Cunningham, who will be a Tuesday-night fixture at Lunaria in West Los Angeles through Aug. 27, have been around the block too many times to let unexpected problems slow them down. The ability to deal with obstacles helped them Tuesday evening, when they had to share a single microphone.

With Don Cunningham switching from percussion to alto sax to vocals, while his wife played piano and shared in the singing, this was not so much a working set as a sprinting match.

The opener, “Calypso Blues,” was a pleasant adaptation of Nat King Cole’s legendary bongos-and-voice recording.

After a couple of standards on alto sax, played with modest technical equipment but no lack of personality, Cunningham swiftly made his way from stage left to stage right to share the mike with his wife for a vocal duet on Duke Ellington’s “What Am I Here For?”

Working without the usual rhythm section, the duo seemed most at ease with jazz standards such as Charlie Parker’s “Yardbird Suite.” At one point Cunningham traded phrases with himself--four bars of scat alternating with four on sax. And his wife is a quietly engaging singer who might be well advised to double more often in Spanish or Portuguese instead of scatting so often.