JAZZ REVIEW : Gibson Throws a World-Class Party

As Dick Gibson’s 30th annual jazz party ended here late Monday in a ballroom of the Radisson Hotel, a mixed air of joy and regret overcame his 625 paying patrons.

For a fee of $265 they had been exposed, over a three-day span, to some 35 hours of pure artistry by 68 musicians, in an endless variety of permutations. Gibson’s world is free of electronics and all slickly packaged pop arrangements. It is about informality. Men who may never have met come together in spontaneous creativity.

This year more than ever, Gibson’s world symbolized the ability of musicians of every age and background to distill unpremeditated works of art. Sunday afternoon Roy Hargrove, the 22-year-old trumpeter, spun out an exquisite version of the 50-year-old ballad “You Don’t Know What Love Is.” Backing him were Jamaican pianist Monty Alexander, phenomenal Los Angeles bassist John Clayton and drummer Ed Thigpen, who flies in every year from his Copenhagen home. On another set Hargrove teamed compatibly with the alto sax of Benny Carter, who was 63 years old when Hargrove was born.

Hargrove was a junior participant. The senior was another trumpeter, Doc Cheatham, who at 87 plays and sings with the same gentle charm he has always displayed. One of his solos was the waltz “Was It a Dream,” which he recalled having performed in 1925.

Gibson’s credo involves loyalty and consistency. Almost all this year’s players are longtime regulars. Pianist Ralph Sutton played at the first party, held at Aspen in 1963 (six years before Hargrove was born). This year there were only three newcomers: Hargrove, the promising 39-year-old guitarist Gray Sargent, and a fast-rising trombonist, Joel Helleny, 35.

Numerous enlightened partnerships have evolved as some of the artists have worked out unique routines. The tenor saxophonists Scott Hamilton and Flip Phillips raced through a wildly spirited duet, “The Claw,” one of many tunes they have recorded as a team. Dick Hyman and Roger Kelloway interacted at two grand pianos with Bach-fuguelike concepts and blues inventions.

There were even two big-band sessions, for which clarinetist and composer Bob Wilber rounded up 16 men who, with almost no rehearsal, read or even sight-read a provocative series of charts that ranged from Ellington to Mozart clarinet quintet variations. These sets drew several standing ovations.

On a more intimate level, there were the sets by John Frigo, whose violin solos on “Too Late Now” and a “Finian’s Rainbow” medley reaffirmed his stature as the most gifted and underrated artist in his field.

Buddy DeFranco’s comparable eminence on clarinet was evidenced in a dazzling speed-of-sound solo “The Lamp Is Low,” based on a theme by Ravel.

No event as casual as this can endure without some moments of boredom. As a noted drummer commented after one of the more predictable sets, “How many times can you deal with ‘Strike Up the Band’ or ‘Sweet Georgia Brown’?” Long-drawn-out jams on other worn-out standbys such as “Limehouse Blues” and “The Sheik of Araby” also produced little of consequence, although the audience, predominantly white and middle-class, eagerly devoured every hellbent finale. Yet it clearly related, if less vociferously, to the sophisticated beauty of Benny Carter’s “Laura” and the eloquent vibraphone of Canada’s Peter Appleyard.

As is his custom, Gibson entered the party on a low key of note. Hargrove and another of the younger men, Los Angeles tenor sax star Rickey Woodard, followed an inflammatory blues with a slow, impassioned version of “What’s New,” while the composer, bassist Bob Haggart, sat in the audience.

As he rounds out his 30th year, Gibson can take credit for 66 spinoff jazz parties, the most recent in Cape Town, South Africa. There may be complaints about his failure to seek out more young musicians, and there is resentment about his total neglect of females (“I don’t think jazz is a woman’s music,” he said the other day). But the quality of the world-class music he does produce makes any negative comment seem churlish.