JAZZ REVIEW : John Abercrombie Brings Imaginative Trio to Catalina

The John Abercrombie heard at Catalina Tuesday was not exactly the musician many listeners expected to hear.

Over the years, this distinctive stylist has experimented with everything from guitar synthesizers to an electric mandolin.

Now, however, he says he’s given up synthesizers, reducing his artillery to an electric guitar--powerfully amplified--and an acoustic model.

In no way does the result represent a retrogression. Abercrombie, who’s appearing through Sunday, still makes imaginative use of tone colors, of free-jazz concepts, unexpected shifts of mood, tempo and meter. His opening composition, “Monk Like,” involved one passage that suggested how Thelonious Monk might have sounded had he been a guitarist.

Three consecutive works from a recently recorded Abercrombie album were combined into a suite, written partly by organist Dan Wall, whose solos ranged from a church-like solemnity to moments of passionate energy.

Both Wall and drummer Adam Nussbaum, who often uses touches of rhythmic humor, are so sensitive in their interaction with the leader that the result is a challenging merger of ideas.