TV Reviews : Bravo’s ‘Birdland’: From Major to Minor

“Birdland,” a series of seven half-hour programs on the Bravo cable channel that starts tonight at 6:30 (with a repeat at 1:30 a.m.), is an unconventional series in that it was produced by the BBC. For this reason, it presents a rare variety of American and British participants, taped in London, New York and Los Angeles.

Tonight’s installment opens with pianist Herbie Hancock and drummer Tony Williams paying each other profuse compliments, after which they join forces to perform “Maiden Voyage” (“the best song I have ever written,” Hancock gloats). He is in superior form here, hewing to the unhyphenated jazz that first established him. Williams’ composition “Sister Cheryl” sustains this creative level.

We then cross the Atlantic to meet Jason Rebello, 23, a pianist with a Cockney accent, who is introduced as a protege of saxophonist Wayne Shorter. The latter’s “Over Shadow Hill Way” reveals Rebello as a graceful and promising if less than innovative soloist. Shorter’s keening soprano sax, Terri Lyne Carrington on drums and Tracy Wormworth on electric bass complete the group.

Next Friday’s show begins awkwardly with Ornette Coleman, the prime avant-gardist of the early 1960s, playing his strangely incoherent alto saxophone and doubling on trumpet and violin, two instruments he has yet to master.

Rounding out the program are American singer Cassandra Wilson and a British vocalist named Cleveland Watkiss, who seems to share with her the desire to cross new frontiers. Credit them for the effort, but they have neither the equipment nor the imagination to carry it off. Their duet on “Body and Soul,” in which they try to avoid singing a single note of the original melody, would leave the late John Green wringing his hands. The couple’s final duet, in which they improvise, humming and scatting and clicking in rhythm, is at least unpretentious fun.