Jazz Review : Making Music With the Barry Harris Trio at Bakery

Barry Harris is a people sort of player. Whether working for a large audience or a small collection of ardent fans, the connection he establishes with his listeners is an implicit element in his art.

As so often happens at jazz venues early in the week, it was the lesser-sized audience that greeted Harris’ performance at the Jazz Bakery on Tuesday night. But it was no problem for the New York-based pianist. He simply brought the small circle of listeners into the center of his music, encouraging them to share an off-the-cuff, interactive musical evening.

Bassist Chuck Israels and drummer Billy Higgins became implicit to the process, tossing musical ideas back and forth, responding spontaneously to Harris and the audience, with Israels making an occasional whimsical aside and Higgins offering his familiar smile of joy in the sheer process of making jazz.

The result was something like an entertaining, but never didactic seminar--appropriately so, given Harris’ impressive background as an educator. He kicked off his first set by asking the crowd to supply a few numbers from one to eight, which he immediately converted to several successive notes. The notes were then incorporated into an improvisation ranging from a middle groove to a rolling rumba.

Most jazz players can do the technique with ease, but with Harris, it was a spontaneous, completely unacademic explanation--experience, actually--of the process of improvisation.

Harris’ piano playing is a distinct extension of the classic Bud Powell be-bop style. Typically, on the faster numbers, his right-hand lines had the free-flowing surge of a horn, while his left hand chopped out crisp accompanying accents. But he also is more lyrical and more compositionally structured than Powell.

His ballads were as romantically tender as they were harmonically complex, and the playful shifts of key in his rendering of “Tea for Two” were the product of a highly focused musical imagination.

Harris concluded by gently leading the way through a sing-along to the melody of a complicated original tune. Remarkably, within a few minutes the audience had it down.

Harris was pleased. But he felt compelled to give a homework assignment. “Tomorrow night,” he said, “I want each of you to come back here with 10 more people.”

Given the relatively rare opportunity to connect with a jazz artist of this quality, it’s an assignment he shouldn’t have to repeat.

* Barry Harris trio at the Jazz Bakery, 3233 Helms Ave., Culver City. (310) 271-9039. $20 admission. Harris plays two sets each night, 8:30 and 10:30, through Saturday.