Jazz Review : Sandoval’s Bowl Program Trumpets His Virtuosity

Sonny Rollins and Grover Washington Jr. were the headliners for the season’s final Jazz at the Bowl concert Wednesday night. But it was Arturo Sandoval who stole the show.

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The Cuban-born trumpeter opened with a program that was simultaneously a delightful entertainment, an improvisational tour de force and a dazzling display of instrumental virtuosity. Sandoval’s high-note trumpet pyrotechnics were predictably impressive, but he was even better in his quiet moments, especially during a harmonically lush reading of Benny Golson’s “I Remember Clifford.” More unexpected were his first-rate piano playing on “Stella by Starlight,” his intermittent flashes of energetic percussion work, his exuberant vocalizing and his joyful interactions with the audience.

Rollins’ set, however, was not one of his best. His sound, once one of the most entrancing voices in jazz, was pinched and thin. And, although he took ample time for soloing, his choruses--with one or two brief exceptions--lacked the decisive articulation and declamatory command that characterized his best work. Rollins may still be capable of carrying a banner of leadership for the jazz tenor saxophone, but, on this evening at least, his playing was well behind its familiar vanguard position.

Aside from an appearance by singer Freddy Cole, Washington’s set offered few surprises. Still one of the finest of the growing number of saxophonists who trade in the world of funk, jazz and soul, he brings a rich, dark timbre and an authoritative melodic flow to otherwise lightweight, riff-driven music. His quietly lyrical, gently supportive fills for Cole’s “I’m Glad There Is You” were the work of a musician who has the capacity--too rarely explored--to do some provocative, pure jazz playing.