JAZZ REVIEW : Turrentine’s Rainbow

For well over three decades, Stanley Turrentine has stood tall--physically and figuratively--among the tenor sax giants.

He hasn’t changed.

Thursday at Ambassador Auditorium in Pasadena, he showed how little has changed for him over the years.

The loud, proud sound is still there, and the solos are so seamlessly constructed that at times they barely seem improvised. The spontaneity soared in such upbeat items as John Coltrane’s “Impressions,” but lagged in a Don Sebesky piece, “I Remember Bill.”

Turrentine referred to his current group as “my rainbow coalition band,” as indeed it was, with two African-Americans, Charles Fambrough on bass and Mark Johnson on drums, plus the Kei Akagi on piano, and the remarkable young, blond guitarist Dave Strykur.

Storming his way through the changes on “Sugar” and Billy Taylor’s “Easy Walker,” Strykur came within a hair’s breadth of copping top honors for the evening. His ideas gushed forth in a stream of seemingly effortless creativity.

Turrentine kept the audience’s attention with a style that’s evolved out of his admiration for the early pioneers--Don Byas, Coleman Hawkins and Sonny Rollins--and has helped him retain a popularity that is rare among non-fusion jazz artists.