JAZZ REVIEW : Cables, Friends Mesh Perfectly at Bakery

Empathy and experience rather than pure talent are often the determining factors in the success of a jazz performance. So when pianist George Cables appeared at the Jazz Bakery on Monday, it was the like-mindedness the estimable modern main-streamer shared with bassist John Heard and drummer Sherman Ferguson, their mutual focus on melody and rhythm and their ability to work as a team, that made the trio’s first set brim with musicality and appeal.

The men played like long-lost comrades--Cables, a former Los Angeles resident, is now back in his native New York, while Heard and Ferguson, though hardly stuck in these climes, are nonetheless stalwarts of the local scene. In fact, they had never performed as an ensemble, though Cables had worked with Heard, and the bassist with Ferguson.

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True, Cables didn’t present his partners with arduously tough material: mostly pop and jazz standards, simply though deftly arranged, along with a pleasant original, “Helen’s Song.” Still, the level of communication on the bandstand was extremely high, and often the players issued the same musical phrase simultaneously, as when Cables hit sparkling chords and Ferguson bolstered their effect with crisp drum statements.

The pianist, who also performed Tuesday, paid acute attention to volume levels, starting tunes like “My Man’s Gone Now” or “I Thought About You” at a whisper, raising the decibels at mid-tune with probing chords and madly swirling lines, then dropping back for a quiet close. Other numbers, like the opening “You Stepped Out of Dream,” which went from a bubbling calypso to a boiling up-tempo, were more brash.

Ferguson and Heard flowed with these changes. The bassist pulled his strings hard to create intensity while the drummer used many tools to boost or reduce volume, as when he played his sock cymbal with his hand and the ride cymbal with his brush, then shifted to sticks to support a Cables’ crescendo.