JAZZ REVIEW : A Long, Slow Haul at the ‘Trane Festival

Production delays, sound system problems and interminable between-act announcements transformed the fifth annual John Coltrane Festival into an audience endurance test at Royce Hall on Sunday. Fortunately, the long waits were occasionally broken by a number of attractive musical interludes--one of them an energetic, completely impromptu solo rendering of “Take Five” by guest speaker Al Jarreau.

Black/Note, an increasingly adept group of young Los Angeles talents, opened the show with a set of straight-ahead jazz pieces that featured a strong, contemporary reading of Benny Golson’s “Along Came Betty.”

The winners of the festival’s Young Musicians & Artists Competition, Black/Note may have been the youngest and least-known act on the program, but it gave far and away the most effective performance.

Other artists included Polish pianist Slavic Kulpowicz, whose affection for the techniques of McCoy Tyner never quite allowed his own musical personality to emerge.

The Divya Band of India survived an almost disastrous failure of the audio system to offer several unusual blendings of Indian raga and Western jazz fusion.

Classical harpsichordist Michele Tiff played Bach with style and enthusiasm, but singer-pantomimist Maletta Davis’ bizarre presentation did little more than extend an already too-long event.

In the headliner spot, Pharoah Sanders seemed somewhat subdued in a variant version of Coltrane’s “Giant Steps.” Curiously, his current playing sounded considerably more Coltrane-influenced than it did when he was working with the saxophonist two decades ago.

The extended program finally wound to a close with the appearance of festival president Alice Coltrane (John’s widow) and her saxophonist sons, Ravi and Oran. By this point, the technical glitches had come dangerously close to overshadowing the festival’s real accomplishment--the encouragement of such talented performers as Black/Note, the Divya Band and Michele Tiff.