JAZZ REVIEW : Watanabe Weaves In Threads of Parker

“Bird’s music is still very strong in me,” said Japanese alto saxophonist Sadao Watanabe in a recent interview. And he wasn’t kidding. Although most of his recordings in the last few years have concentrated on fusion- and Brazilian-tinged music, Tuesday night’s opening set of a weeklong run at Catalina Bar & Grill resonated with the sounds of Charlie Parker.

Watanabe’s program of tunes was fairly far-ranging: one or two bop lines, a couple of standards--”All the Things You Are” and “I Thought About You”--Antonio Carlos Jobim’s “Chega de Saudade” and a few originals. But from the moment he kicked off the first number, it was apparent that Watanabe, who has also expressed a great desire to move away from his pop jazz image and “get back to the saxophone,” intended to tap into the roots of his playing.

Which is precisely what he did. Watanabe is a walking compendium of be-bop. Mention a familiar Parker lick, and you can bet it turned up somewhere in one of his solos. But, to his credit, Watanabe approached the style with dignity, respect, creativity and, above all, an impressive ability to swing. He may have been speaking someone else’s dialect, but the imagination and the energy were his.

Unfortunately, the opening-night performance was clouded by some uncertainties with the rhythm team of Alan Pasqua, piano; Dave Carpenter, bass, and Peter Erskine, drums. Lack of rehearsal time and general musical unfamiliarity between Watanabe and the others made for enough small, missed connections to undermine the music’s overall togetherness. Even so, as the set moved toward its close, there were brief glimmers of a potentially promising encounter between Watanabe and the local rhythm section. It seems likely that, as the week progresses, the increased playing time will result in an attractive evening of be-bop revisited.

* The Sadao Watanabe Quartet at Catalina Bar & Grill, through Sunday, 8:30 and 10:30 p.m., 1640 N. Cahuenga Blvd., (213) 466-2210. $13 cover tonight and Sunday, $16 cover Friday and Saturday, with two-drink minimum.