Art Farmer’s Music, Talent Withstand the Test of Time

Art Farmer’s opening night performance at the Jazz Bakery on Wednesday was a revealing illustration of one of the key differences between jazz and pop music. The measure of success for a jazz musician is the quality of his or her encounter with the music itself. For pop musicians, success is based upon their capacity to achieve topical relevance, record sales and audience popularity.

What this means for a performer like Farmer, now 67, is that his music has continued to evolve over the decades, defined not by commercial success, but by his persistently intriguing creative imagination. Had he been a high-visibility pop performer in his younger years, audiences might simply clamor for a repetition of his earlier work. But as a jazz artist, the only expectancy he must deal with is his listeners’ insistence that he maintain his musical curiosity and his technical skills.

And Farmer has done precisely that. Working at the Bakery before a nearly full house with the local rhythm section of Lou Levy (piano), Andy Simpkins (bass) and Roy McCurdy (drums), he necessarily had to play a program of standard tunes. But the tunes were good, harmonically interesting numbers such as “Alone Together,” “I Remember You” and “I Let a Song Go Out of My Heart.”

Farmer started a bit slowly, initially having some pitch problems. But after his first couple of solos he finally began to find his pace. His warm, honeyed tone, with a focused timbre that bypasses the typically brassy trumpet sound, was at its best in a beautifully lyrical reading of “Stardust.” And Farmer’s inclusion of the song’s lengthy, melodically and harmonically fascinating verse added an even broader range of emotional impact to his interpretation.

Farmer did not, however, limit himself to the lyrical eloquence that is so essential to his style. Many solos contrasted his characteristically flowing lines with sudden, wide melodic leaps--sharp accents of primary color against a background of softer pastel tones. And in his closer, a fast-surging rendering of “Will You Still be Mine,” he displayed his still-potent ability to perform with great alacrity at the most demanding up tempos.

It was a convincing demonstration of the splendid ability of jazz, and of a talented jazz artist, to produce music unaffected by the tides of fashion or the demands of commerce.

* The Art Farmer Quartet at the Jazz Bakery through Sunday. 3233 Helms Ave. (310) 271-9039. $20 admission; $17 for Sunday matinee. Farmer performs one show tonight, two shows Saturday, at 8 and 10:30 p.m., and two shows Sunday, at 4 and 8 p.m.