JAZZ REVIEW : Jarreau Is Voice-Perfect in Anaheim Performance

Al Jarreau is a human synthesizer.

At different times during his concert Friday at the Celebrity Theatre, Jarreau’s voice took on the characteristics of a flute or guitar, bass or keyboard. He huffed and clucked through percussion passages while seemingly working the invisible noisemakers with his hands. At one point, he even got applause for whistling through his teeth.

It’s the kind of thing the versatile vocalist has built a career on, and it made for his best moments during this first night of a two-night stand. If anything, Jarreau handles his array of tonal effects better these days than when he first created a sensation back in the mid-’70s. The singer now uses his cast of colors more conservatively; they’re presented as less of a novelty and more an integral part of a group sound.

That group, under the direction of keyboardist Neil Larson, was a tight-knit, funky-as-you-please octet driven by muscular drummer Terri Lyne Carrington and bassist Keith Jones. Trumpeter Michael Stewart and saxophonist Michael Paulo took turns out front with guitarist Buzzy Feiten and Jarreau couldn’t resist joining in on some of the improvisational exchanges between them, plucking away air-guitar style while adding his own electric tones. The singer opened “One Way,” a lush, Brazilian-influenced piece pulled from his recent “Heart’s Horizon” album, with tropical coos and breathy percussion effects before breaking into its lyric. Then it was on to a scat workout done in keyboard tones, both his hands in motion as if he were playing the instrument. Near its close, he shifted the tune’s rhythmic pace with some nifty, wordless patter.

Perennial Jarreau favorite “Take Five” found the singer putting a flute-like vocal to rich keyboard backing from Larson while Feiten swirled in echoing guitar chords. From this bit of suspended rhythmic play, the tune evolved into a smart, insistent version of the Brubeck classic as Carrington added direction to percussionist Leonard Gibbs’ sweeping rings and rattles. Both this tune and “One Way” were given long treatments with plenty of room for solos from Paulo and Feiten.

If Jarreau was at his best when stretching out with the instrumental side of his voice, he was less satisfying when delivering lyrics in a more straightforward manner. Some of the tunes, especially those of commercial length and temperament (“So Good” was one) didn’t allow the singer to really show off his improvisational wares and came off as nothing more than pleasantly bland.

One exception was his duet with vocalist-keyboardist Vonda Shepard on “Since I Fell for You,” an effort which had a few goose-bump-raising emotional moments as the two traded lines. Another was his brief, a capella encore of “The Christmas Song.”

Minus the singer, Jarreau’s supporting crew got the evening off to a promising start with Larson’s upbeat “Carnival,” featuring Stewart’s short but searing trumpet solo, and Paulo’s in-the-groove ballad “One Passion,” which the saxophonist brought to the boiling point with heated, if predictable, alto statements. Carrington’s “Human Revolution” was more involved than the version heard on her “Real Life Story” album, but the tune’s unsettled rhythmic changes seemed to loose the audience.

Opener Lalah Hathaway put her sometimes breathy, middle-range voice to a quintet of mixed-tempo tunes. She sang over a wide range, getting an especially intimate sound at the lower end of her voice, and her array of stylistic effects--exaggerated vibrato, bent notes and long-held tones that slid from one octave to the next--never got in the way of her delivery. She joined Jarreau during his set for “The Closer I Get to You,” a presentation that was warm and just a touch suggestive.