Jazz : Tour Echoes Newport Sound

The Newport Jazz Festival. After 40 years, the title continues to have a ring to it, even though the annual celebrations haven’t taken place in Newport since the ‘70s, and the quality level over the years has ranged from extraordinary jazz to bland fusion.

Still, name a jazz great of the last half-century and he or she has probably played the festival.

This year, for the first time, the festival is on tour--not in the vast size and reach of the event itself, but in the spirit of the small, jam-session-oriented get-togethers of individual musicians that often have provided some of the festival’s most electrifying listening experiences.

Saturday night’s concert at the Wadsworth Theatre by the Newport Jazz Festival on Tour, with 11 well-known and not-so-well-known players, supplied a healthy taste of what those original festival sessions were like. Opening with a loose ensemble rendition of Clifford Brown’s “Blues Walk,” and closing with a roaring, high-voltage romp through Dizzy Gillespie’s “Night in Tunisia,” the evening was otherwise mostly devoted to showcase presentations of various combinations of musicians.

Among the many highlights: cornetist Warren Vache, perhaps the least-familiar major name on stage, playing two tunes from the score of “High Society” with the soaring, lyrical touch of a contemporary Bix Beiderbecke; veteran Harry (Sweets) Edison, still swinging after all these years, humorously upstaging the more ferociously virtuosic Jon Faddis with bits of musical whimsy; Faddis’ telling impression of Miles Davis on “All Blues” and his stratospheric high notes on “Night in Tunisia”; trombonist Urbie Green’s warm-toned reading of “You’ve Changed”; a tenor saxophone battle between Red Holloway and Lew Tabackin on “Jumpin’ at the Woodside”; Bill Easley’s brisk clarinet on an up-tempo “Limehouse Blues,” and the consistently dependable support from the rhythm team of Mike LeDonne on piano, Howard Alden on guitar, Peter Washington on bass and Lewis Nash on drums.