Pop and Jazz : Jazz Is Sparse in Long Beach Festival

The kick-off for the fourth annual Long Beach Jazz Festival perfectly symbolized the pluses and minuses in this year’s eclectic, three-day program.

When George Duke, opening the event Friday at Rainbow Lagoon Park, finally announced--after a string of vocals--”Now we’re gonna let the band play,” it was apparent that the basic verities of jazz improvisation might be in short supply.

Duke has become a first-rate producer, as well as a successful performer of funk-based fusion, since his early work with Al Jarreau and Cannonball Adderley. His music, overflowing with soaring soul songs and hard-edged synthesizer rhythms, suggested that he has few nostalgic feelings for the mainstream efforts of his youth.

Singer Angela Bofill, another performer who started out with promising jazz potential, devoted most of her set to ballads. Every now and then, Bofill ripped off a little riff, a boppish run or a swooping phrase, all of which implied richer depths in her expression. But the promise was almost always passed over in favor of more easily manageable soul cliches.

Surprisingly, saxophonist Gerald Albright, probably the least-known act on the bill, was the only one to come up with a collection of tunes that made a reasonable effort to justify the program’s description as a jazz festival. Playing tenor and alto with an approach that oddly combined the muscularity of Stanley Turrentine with the quixotic rhythms of Archie Shepp, Albright infused even his pop-style efforts with energy and enthusiasm.

Saturday’s and Sunday’s schedules included, among others: Billy Cobham, Cab Calloway, Dianne Reeves, Eddie Harris, Hugh Masekela, Diane Schuur and Etta James. Not a bad lineup for a production whose outdoor setting is one of the summer’s most attractive. But like Friday’s opening, its perhaps too-strong quotient of commercially oriented music seemed fated to dominate its jazz identification.