Branford Marsalis Finds Magic Playing in the Moment

The question about which of Branford Marsalis’ musical personas would show up at the Jazz Bakery on Tuesday night was answered in the first few bars of the very first tune. And it was, happily, the gifted, imaginative, jazz saxophone-playing Marsalis who took center stage.

Performing with an intensity that seemed to suggest a desire to reaffirm his status as a major league player, he put his best wares on display, playing with the same pair of musicians--bassist Reginald Veal and drummer Jeff “Tain” Watts--on his new Warner Bros. album, “The Dark Keys.” The result was a rare and wonderful treat, the chance to watch and hear a superbly gifted player working at the cutting edge of his skill, unfazed by commercial considerations and clearly enjoying every minute of what he was doing.

Marsalis was characteristically relaxed and amiable, joking with the enthusiastic, capacity audience and interacting with the other musicians during the first night of an engagement that runs through Sunday. The program was dominated by numbers from the new recording, including his own lovely ballad “A Thousand Autumns” (dedicated to tenor great Wayne Shorter) and brother Wynton’s “Hesitation.”

But the core of the set was an illuminating opportunity to experience Marsalis’ exploratory improvising in the most exposed jazz context--without a harmony instrument to lay out chords, accompanied only by bass and drums. And, unfailingly, from tune to tune, he conjured up musical magic within the format, technically virtuosic in the faster tempos, warm and lyrical in the ballads.

As an ensemble player, he tossed little fragmentary musical ideas toward drummer Watts, waited for a response, then tossed a few more. When Watts ripped into a surging drum solo on his feature number, “Citizen Tain,” Marsalis underscored and supported the solo with interjected low notes and punched-out bits of melody.

The high quality of the performance brought yet another question to mind: Why hasn’t he been universally acknowledged as the major tenor saxophonist of the ‘80s and ‘90s?

The answer has nothing to do with Marsalis’ playing, which was consistently compelling--both musically and as sheer jazz entertainment. The answer is that Marsalis has moved in so many different musical directions since his initial, revelatory recordings of the late ‘80s that his ability to emerge as an important jazz voice has been diluted by his other activities.

But his playing at the Bakery is a potent reminder of his still-expanding abilities. If the sometimes quixotic Marsalis continues to retain this kind of musical focus, acknowledgment of his role as the tenor saxophone standard-bearer of the 1990s will be firmly established.

* The Branford Marsalis Trio at the Jazz Bakery, 3233 Helms Ave., (310) 271-9039. (Closed for Thanksgiving.) $20, Friday and Saturday at 8:30 p.m. and Sunday at 8 p.m.; $18, Friday and Saturday at 10:15 p.m. and Sunday at 4 p.m. Through Sunday.