TV REVIEW : Jazz Players Bridge the Atlantic in ‘Birdland’ Series

The fourth segment in Bravo’s “Birdland” series, tonight at 7 and midnight, is an intrepid initiative that brings together two saxophonists on different continents but with related concepts.

Steve Coleman, 36, is a visionary American alto saxophonist whose group opens the half hour with a heavily funk-oriented work, “Rhythm People.” The British participant is Steve Williamson, 28, whose tenor sax is introduced in a highly charged performance entitled “Circle C.”

Both men are interviewed briefly, and both make it clear that they are searching for new avenues.

The idiom in which they seem to be involved is a music now known as M-Base, which superimposes avant-garde improvisations (seemingly moving in and out of tonality) on a basis of complex polyrhythms.

Coleman joins with Williamson’s quintet (which includes an adventurous guitarist Tony Remy) for the third and final number, “Awakening.” Clearly their geographical separation has not prevented them from forging a fraternal link.

Produced and directed by Kriss Rusmanis for BBC Lionheart Television, the music of men such as Coleman and Williamson may seem inaccessible to some, removed as it is from the traditional harmonic and melodic values of yesteryear; moreover, Coleman’s claim to have held Charlie Parker as a role model seems hard to believe, since their approaches are light-years apart.

Nevertheless, the result gives an accurate picture of where jazz may be headed as we move toward to the music’s second century.