O.C. JAZZ REVIEW : Mulligan Is Guide for Tour de Force

If more mainstream acoustic jazz musicians presented their talents as effectively as Gerry Mulligan does, there’s little doubt that this complex, often misunderstood genre--a blend of such elements as European classical, American pop, and African and Latin musics--would be far more popular.

The renowned baritone saxophonist and composer may not represent the zenith of artistic creativity but he comes close, doing a number of things very well. He writes accessible tunes, orchestrates them in a manner that arouses and maintains interest, improvises with a swinging mellifluousness, and chats convivially with his audience. It’s hard not to come away from a Mulligan show with a good feeling.

With his trademark tone--part bark, part bray, part purr--Mulligan was in prime form Friday evening for his outdoor concert at the Hyatt Newporter Resort. Working with a classy trio (Ted Rosenthal on piano, Dean Johnson on bass and Ron Vincent on drums), the native New Yorker did as he promised in his opening remarks, taking the overflow crowd on “a few trips.”

The first of these was “The Flying Scotsman,” a musical representation of a train ride from London to Edinburgh. As Mulligan played the very brisk melody, one indeed could visualize a train charging at full blast, steam pouring out of the smokestack.

Pushed and prodded by Vincent’s effervescent yet incendiary drumming and Johnson’s resilient bass lines, Mulligan stood in one spot, swaying as he played, moving his large horn around as if it were weightless. Eyes closed, grimacing as he worked, the white-haired, pencil-thin 64-year-old delivered quicksilver, fast-turning lines that blurred in the ear, as well as short, choppy phrases that swaggered rhythmically.

Another train tune, “K-4 Pacific” from his “The Age of Steam” album, spotlighted Mulligan’s whizzing, descending triplets and zooming, rounded-edge lines over stop-time patterns from the rhythm section. The trio played a two-note phrase, stopped, then played the phrase again, and so on, as the leader improvised with abandon.

The 12-tune concert also included “Line For Lyons,” a Mulligan classic from the ‘50s; the lulling “Song For Strayhorn;” a gentle bossa nova called “A Gift For Diz,” and a tender ballad, “Noblesse.”

Most of the songs were decidedly pretty; many seemed as if they would fit right into a Broadway show by Stephen Sondheim. “Midas Lives” ran a tad counter to the others with its darker, moodier viewpoint.

On Saturday evening, Mulligan traveled to Hollywood where he played with an 11-piece band before a sell-out throng at the John Anson Ford Theatre. There, he proved once again that a contemporary airing can breathe an amazing amount of life into a work composed long ago.

Mulligan went back 40 years, reviving selections from the memorable 1949 and 1950 “Birth of the Cool” sessions led by Miles Davis, which Mulligan recently re-recorded. With Davis, Mulligan had examined be-bop-based material with a fresh sound, pitting the higher timbres of trumpet and alto sax against such low brass as trombone, French horn and tuba. Mulligan’s aggregation Saturday, which included such esteemed jazzmen as trumpeter Art Farmer and alto saxophonist Lee Konitz, duplicated the instrumentation of the original sessions, except for the addition of an extra trumpet and a tenor sax-clarinet part.

The vigorous renditions of such well-preserved items as “Godchild,” “Boplicity” and “Moon Dreams” clearly demonstrated that these are not simply museum pieces. “Jeru” was distinctive for its dynamic climax, as the brass and reed sections tossed snappy lines back and forth. “Israel” began with a melody rendered by the low brass, followed by the piercing brightness of trumpet and alto sax. Gil Evans’ dramatic arrangement of the oozingly slow “Moon Dreams” ended with a humongous wall of soft sound, instruments darting in and out, changing the timbral color.

The soloists were first rate. Farmer’s ingenuity was quietly break-taking as he took a series of brief phrases and strung them together into complex wholes. Konitz applied his one-of-a-kind sound, seemingly flat but really full of juice, to stretched-out notes and relaxed phrases that ran counter to the bubbling rhythm of a tune such as “Israel.” Mulligan, as he had Friday, swung with characteristic vitality and accessibility.

The Saturday concert also included several non-”Cool” Mulligan works, including expanded versions of “Flying Scotsman” and “K-4 Pacific” that sounded even better when played by a bigger band.