JAZZ REVIEW : Two Salutes Lift N.Y.’s JVC Festival

Unlike the sun-and-fun ambience of the Playboy Jazz Festival at the Hollywood Bowl, musical celebrations here tend to be at the mercy of the elements. Intermittent drizzles on Friday, the first day of the annual JVC Jazz Festival, led to an abrupt curtailing of the jam session and garden party at Gracie Mansion, where the mayor traditionally hosts a prelude to the weeklong event.

This augury of a less-than-festive festival was contradicted Friday evening at Carnegie Hall, where a capacity audience was on hand to salute an ailing jazz giant in a program billed as “To Dizzy With Love.” Dizzy Gillespie himself was missing (he is still at home recovering from the major surgery he underwent last March), but a taped message from him assured us that he will soon be back in action.

For the tribute concert, trombonist Slide Hampton assembled a 15-piece band consisting of proteges, colleagues or contemporaries of the be-bop pioneer, who will be 75 in October.

This could easily have been a tiresome exercise in nostalgia, but Hampton’s rearrangements of such 1940s Gillespie compositions as “Birks Works,” “Ow” and the gracefully melodic “Con Alma” gave them a fresh and engaging aspect. With Milt Jackson on vibes, James Moody on saxes, Hank Jones or Mike Longo on piano and other powerful soloists, a high level of spontaneity suffused the evening.

The most telling evidence of Gillespie’s influence was his “Tour de Force,” played just by the five trumpeters. Each was notable for a personal trait--Jon Faddis for his incredible stratospherics, Freddie Hubbard for ferocity and fire, Wynton Marsalis for elegance and expertise, Claudio Roditi for finesse and phrasing, Red Rodney for tonal beauty and lyricism--yet all five showed how valuably the Dizzy style has fanned out into these stylistic subdivisions.

As is often the case during this festival, simultaneous concerts make for difficult decisions. Saturday there were two options. At the Equitable Auditorium, the title “Jazz for the Fun of It” suggested a welcome infusion of humor; however, the first set was performed by a Spike Jones-style band, complete with banjo, tuba, xylophone and jokey vocals. After 20 minutes of this it seemed wise to head for the door and hasten up Seventh Avenue to Carnegie Hall, where Bill Cosby was hosting a tribute to John Coltrane.

Pianist McCoy Tyner and drummer Elvin Jones, both alumni of Coltrane’s 1960s quartet, offered impressions of that era with an accent on high energy. Tyner has advanced in harmonic imagination since those days, but his trio was hampered at times by the intrusive drumming of Aaron Scott.

Elvin Jones is vigor incarnate. His fearsome, visceral appeal was the centerpiece of his dynamic sextet in two Coltrane pieces (“Your Lady” and “Alabama”) followed by Mongo Santamaria’s “Afro Blue.”

The saxophonists, who included Coltrane’s son Ravi on soprano as well as Sonny Fortune and Lavon Jackson on tenors, differed less from one another, or from Coltrane himself, than the five trumpeters Friday had differed from their own source, Gillespie. For all his genius and influence, Coltrane tended to operate within a narrower dynamic and emotional range than the be-boppers. Surprisingly, the three saxes as a unit came off well in “Wide Open,” a composition credited to Cosby; elsewhere, too often monotony reigned.

In a warm and eloquent speech, Cosby introduced a fourth saxophonist, Charles Lloyd, who has been in virtual self-exile for most of the last decade. “This man,” Cosby said, “does not imitate anyone.” He was correct. In an astonishing performance, much of it entirely unaccompanied, the white-haired Lloyd took his tenor sax into wild, uncharted territories. His strange body English--legs and torso in perpetual motion--provided a fitting visual counterpoint to his constantly surprising flow of ideas. Ironically, the so-called “Tribute to Trane” reached its climax with this soloist who owed least to him.

The outlook for the rest of the festival, which ends Saturday, is mixed. The critics have again grumbled that producer George Wein relies too heavily on the actuarial tables--he has several more salutes to deceased artists on the schedule; however, the results will have to be judged on a case-by-case basis.