Pianist Augments Ray Brown Trio

“We have a new piano player,” was Ray Brown’s first comment from the stage of Catalina Bar & Grill Tuesday night. “And we think he’s doing a helluva job!”

It was both instant acknowledgment and high praise from the veteran bassist for the arrival of Geoff Keezer in the Ray Brown Trio. After years in which the ensemble, with Benny Green on piano, had become one of the most solidly dependable groups in jazz, the obvious question at the start of a six-night run was how long it would take for Keezer to fit in.

And, in the improvisational spirit of jazz, the answer was not exactly the expected one because Keezer is too talented and too unique an artist to fit into a mold created by anyone other than himself. Leader of his own recording groups for nearly a decade, the 26-year-old Wisconsin native brought an edgy inventiveness and a strikingly rich harmonic authority to his playing with Brown’s group.

Like Green, he showed an impressive capacity to swing in the brisk, funky lines that Brown seems to favor. But he also did not hesitate to move into broad, rhapsodic playing (especially during a brief solo), avant-garde-tinged harmonic clusters and meter-challenging, off-center rhythms.

For the moderate-sized, approving audience, Keezer’s playing was one of many delights in an appealing evening of jazz. Brown’s sturdy accompaniments were as impressive as they have been for the past five decades. And his soloing revealed a master’s ability to pick the right notes for precisely the right purposes. Drummer Greg Hutchinson was his usual dependable self, his individuality emerging only in bits and pieces until his impressive solo on a romp through Victor Feldman’s “Seven Steps to Heaven.”

Brown watched his new protege with a warm, Buddha-like smile. But there was something more than patriarchal approval in his own playing, which seemed energized by Keezer’s work.

But the delight of the evening was the fact that the 70-year-old Brown has once again assembled an eminently listenable group.

BE THERE

The Ray Brown Trio at Catalina Bar & Grill through Sunday, 1640 N. Cahuenga Blvd., (213) 466-2210.