Jazz Partnership Enjoys Gala Beginning

The serious business of the partnership between the Music Center and the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz got underway Tuesday night at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

More than six months after the partnership made a joint announcement that the institute will be positioned as a resident company, with jazz and jazz education elevated to a level equal to that of the other performing arts organizations at the Music Center, the first major result of the alliance finally arrived in the form of a gala concert.

It was a program that symbolized both the potential benefits and the possible hazards that face the alliance.

On the plus side, there were many exquisite musical moments. Perhaps appropriately, given the strong educational orientation of the Monk Institute, the most intriguing were provided by the strong playing of the Jazz Sports LA Big Band, and the energetically imaginative work of the Jazz Sports LA Combo--all talented young musicians drawn from area high schools. An overflow crowd, including many students from the represented high schools, enthusiastically cheered the work of the neophyte jazz artists.

But there was noteworthy playing from the name performers on the bill, as well. The trio, with tenor saxophonist Joshua Redman, bassist Christian McBride and drummer Brian Blade, opened the evening with a sterling, upbeat improvisational romp, immediately followed by the delightful bass trio of McBride, Ray Brown and John Clayton (redefining both the blues and “Mack the Knife”).

Dianne Reeves showed her versatility with ballads and scat singing, and an “All-Star” ensemble (guitarist Kenny Burrell, keyboardist Patrice Rushen, trumpeter Oscar Brashear, bassist Brian Bromberg and drummer Ndugu Chancler) added some easygoing blowing, highlighted by a vigorous, set-closing “Caravan.”

The second half of the concert began with a somewhat darker quality, featuring the impressionistic work of two introspective duos--pianist Brad Mehldau and bassist Charlie Haden, and saxophonist Wayne Shorter and pianist Herbie Hancock (who is artistic director of the Monk Institute-Music Center partnership). The evening closed with the inexplicable appearance of Stevie Wonder and a final jam session based on Hancock’s hit tune “Watermelon Man.”

The Mehldau-Haden pairing was particularly attractive. Although their playing had a clear resonance with the work of Bill Evans and Scott La Faro, it also possessed a unique quality of its own, driven by Mehldau’s growing sense of musical individuality and Haden’s rock-solid, but always probing bass playing. Shorter and Hancock reprised the rhapsodic duo music they have been exploring since the release of their “1+1” album. Always spontaneous, their performance sounded even more impromptu this time around, uneven at times, but as always with these two innovative artists, fascinating to hear.

Despite the generally high level of playing, however, the program had an unfocused, meandering quality. The choice of music seemed casual, there was little sense of advance preparation or rehearsal for the performances and--perhaps most important--the program lacked both a creative center and a feeling of musical purpose.

The comments of Hancock and hosts Billy Dee Williams and Debbie Allen aside, the evening offered no real sense--as it should have, for a celebratory, introductory event--of what the partnership was all about, other than to offer still-premature self-congratulatory remarks. If the initial hullabaloo about the Monk Institute-Music Center partnership’s elevation of jazz to equivalent status with the other performing arts at the Music Center was in fact justified, the significance of that elevation was unclear in an evening of pleasant but otherwise unfocused music.