JAZZ REVIEW : LaBarbera Combo Works Well

The quintet presented Friday by Joe LaBarbera at Club Brasserie of the Bel Age Hotel is one that has gigged locally since the drummer ended his 12-year tour with Tony Bennett.

LaBarbera is a sensitive, supportive leader who limited his soloing to the final tune of the set. The group devoted most of its time to standards and originals played in the hard bop vein.

The two main soloists, Clay Jenkins on trumpet and Joe Ramano on tenor sax kept the ideas flowing well enough to sustain the interest. Ramano at times achieved impressive peaks of intensity. Jenkins had a lyrical solo outing, at times evoking a Chet Baker personality, on Mal Waldron’s “Soul Eyes.”

The group has an important contributor in Bill Cunliffe. A pianist who won the Thelonious Monk Award in 1989, he is also a composer. Two of his pieces, “Blue Notes” and “Chick It Out,” gave the quintet a sense of unity that it lacked on such casual items as “It’s You or No One.”

Completing the unit is Tom Warrington, a bassist who displayed melodic imagination in his solos and a firm beat in his rhythmic underpinning. In short, LaBarbera had a combo here that works well individually or collectively.