Ponty’s New Fusion Mixes West African Music, Jazz

Jean Luc Ponty made a name for himself during the 1970s alongside jazz-rock fusioneers such as John McLaughlin, Chick Corea and Frank Zappa.

Now, Ponty is onto a new kind of fusion. On “Tchokola,” his new album released earlier this year, Ponty joins forces with seven West African musicians, a band he is bringing to San Diego for an 8 p.m. show this Sunday in the Grand Ballroom at the Hyatt Regency in La Jolla.

Ponty’s new band mates wrote most of the material for “Tchokola,” and the sound of Ponty’s violin works well in this context, practically melting into the dense, exuberant rhythms and spirited vocal chants provided by the band.

His new ensemble is an eyeful as well as an earful.

“They have colorful costumes,” Ponty said. “Because this music is based on dance rhythms--even though sometimes it is not music for entertainment, but linked to ceremonies of life, death, burials--they always move.”

As for Ponty, he said he gets around on stage more than usual, but is still no threat to Michael Jackson.

Branching out to West African sounds is not out of character for Ponty. His career has been distinguished by a remarkable ability to adapt to new musical forms.

Trained as a classical violinist, Ponty attended the Paris Conservatory of Music and was playing in a major orchestra in Paris while still in his teens.

His initial jazz experiences, though, were on clarinet and tenor sax. In 1959, he heard his first jazz, an album by trumpeter Chet Baker. Soon after, Ponty auditioned for a jazz group from a French engineering school and got the job.

“I wanted to go to parties and have fun and meet girls,” Ponty said. “I did not know what jazz was about. I was a classical purist.”

Soon, Ponty became a jazz convert, learning the history of the music, from Louis Armstrong to John Coltrane. And, when he began considering the prospect of playing French clubs with first-rate players, he switched back to violin, his most-accomplished instrument.

By the early 1960s, Ponty was playing with Bud Powell and other jazz heavies when they came through Paris, and, in the 1970s, he began recording with several American jazz-fusion players.

Ponty’s show this Sunday will consist of material from the new album, plus a couple of songs from his past, reworked for the new band.

The new music is quite a departure for Ponty, but he had the full support of Epic, his new label.

Epic’s president, Dave Glew, has known Ponty for 10 years, from a time when both were associated with Atlantic Records.

“He always seemed to appreciate my music,” said Ponty, 49. “As soon as I signed with Epic, he asked me what I had in mind as the next project, and I told him--he thought it was fantastic.”

This show is the first to be presented at the Hyatt by promoter Jeff Gaulton, who also books the Theatre East in El Cajon. Gaulton said he is planning to bring several more pop-jazz artists to the venue in the weeks ahead, and may expand to other musical genres as well.

What does Chopin have in common with Thelonious Monk and Fats Waller? On the surface, not a lot, but there are similarities in the structures of classical and jazz compositions.

Cecil Lytle, jazz pianist and UC San Diego Third College provost, will explore some of these similarities when he uses the music of Chopin, Monk, Waller and others to illustrate a lecture-concert on the subject of “Theme and Variation,” at 8:30 tonight at the Theatre East (East County Performing Arts Center) in El Cajon.

“I’ve chosen those particular Chopin pieces because they are impromptu, they have the least amount of form of any of his works,” said Lytle, who will go it solo tonight. “I think it’s a myth to think that any of the classical composers wrought these pieces fully blown. To varying degrees, different composers employed repetition, the re-working of pieces to make them adhere to specific forms.

“Of all the classical composers, Chopin was the one who allowed his pieces to stay as near as possible to their initial improvised form. And of hundreds of Chopin pieces, the ‘Impromptus’ are closest to improvisation.”

When not lecturing or playing live, Lytle has been busy recording this year: the fifth and sixth CDs in his series of the music of composer-philosopher George Gurdjieff have just been released (look for them under “New Age”), and, last July, Lytle recorded an album of Waller’s music in a new, $2-million recording studio on the UCSD campus.

RIFFS: It’s time for something called the “Fall Flute for All,” this Sunday afternoon at 3:30 in the San Diego State University Amphitheatre. On hand for this multi-flavored flute salad will be San Diego flutists Lori Bell (with pianist Dave Mackay) and Holly Hofmann (with San Diegan Ron Satterfield), and, from Los Angeles, James Walker, with the group Free Flight (also including former David Bowie pianist and jazz virtuoso Mike Garson). Admission is $9. . . .

Veteran saxman Harold Land, still in top form, plays the Horton Grand Hotel downtown this Friday through Sunday nights. . . .

Tommy Vig plays a mean jazz vibraharp and composes music for movies and TV. Wife Mia was child performer on the “Ed Sullivan Show” and is best-known as a Las Vegas headliner. Together, they team for two nights of jazz, this Friday and Saturday at 8 at Jazz by the Way in Rancho Bernardo. . . .

Fattburger plays the weekly KSDS-FM “Jazz Nite” at the Catamaran Wednesday night at 8.