Jazz Review : Ahmad Jamal Opens Week With Provocative Precision

To pianist Ahmad Jamal, music is as much silence as it is sound--as much soft understatement as roaring crescendo. He made that instantly clear when he stepped on stage Tuesday night for the opening set of a weeklong run before an enthusiastic full house at Catalina Bar & Grill.

Kicking off a medium tempo tune with some brisk chording, Jamal’s sensitive musical antennae immediately surveyed the club’s ambient acoustics. Playing with one hand, and conducting with the other, he led bassist James Cammack and drummer Dave Bowler through a series of minute changes of volume and intensity, pushing here, pulling there, until he was fully assured that the trio had found a way to express its characteristically delicate balance of crashing chords, quietly laid-back melodies and surging rhythms.

This kind of concern for detail has been an implicit aspect of Jamal’s music for nearly 40 years. The result is a creative idiom that is both musically precise and emotionally provocative. Perhaps equally important, it is an approach to improvising that appears to continually stimulate Jamal’s own playing. Performing songs such as “Skylark,” “All the Things You Are” and “Poinciana”--songs he has done hundreds of times--he still seemed to retain the joy of discovery, occasionally smiling, tilting his head to one side, nodding an affirmative grunt or muttering a satisfied “yeah!”

There were times, especially on the less familiar numbers, when style tended to suppress substance, when musical content was on the verge of being buried beneath too many layers of shifting rhythm and dynamics. But Jamal is too wise to allow himself to be imprisoned in his own style. Typically, when his stormy bursts of chording threatened to overshadow the music, he would suddenly allow bright, sunny beams of melody to break through the clouds.

It was an impressive performance by an artist who too often has been overlooked as a “cocktail jazz” player. But the labeling is misguided and inaccurate. Jamal’s work at Catalina this week is providing an object lesson in the way jazz can be simultaneously detailed and spontaneous, thoughtful and entertaining.

* The Ahmad Jamal Trio at Catalina Bar & Grill, 1640 N. Cahuenga Blvd., Hollywood. (213) 466-2210. Jamal plays two sets each night, 8:30 and 10:30, through Sunday. $12 cover tonight and Sunday; $15 cover Friday and Saturday, with two-drink minimum.