Pianists Lewis, Benoit, Tyner and Brubeck Electrify Bowl

“Maybe we should call this ‘piano-rama,’ ” said Ramsey Lewis, halfway through his set at the Hollywood Bowl Wednesday night. And piano-rama it was--a finger-busting program of black-and-white key pyrotechnics with a lineup that included jazz pianists Lewis, David Benoit, Dave Brubeck and McCoy Tyner.

It was a pretty good company for a survey of the far-flung territory that jazz piano playing has come to encompass, with each artist delivering mini-portrayals of their own unique musical domains.

Benoit’s opening set was typical of this precise and articulate artist. Playing with Brubeck’s sons, Chris, on bass, and Dan, on drums, and saxophonist Eric Marienthal, Benoit delivered a couple of coolly efficient numbers before finally attracting some attention from the moderate-sized crowd with a rousing romp through Vince Guaraldi’s “Cast Your Fate to the Winds.”

Although Benoit’s playing continued to have a somewhat emotionally detached quality, there were more than a few moments in which the solid jazz articulation that has always simmered beneath the surface of his music broke through. Joined by Brubeck for a duet on “In Your Own Sweet Way” (one of Brubeck’s classic themes), Benoit moved even more firmly into the jazz orbit.

Brubeck’s ability to hammer out hard-edged jazz rhythms, of course, has never been doubted. Joined by longtime bassist Eugene Wright (with Chris Brubeck moving to trombone, and saxophonist-flutist Bobby Militello) he spent much of his set cruising through the crowd-pleasing “Take Five” and “Blue Rondo a la Turk” (the former with an impressive drum solo by Dan Brubeck, the latter with Benoit and Marienthal joining the performance).

But Brubeck, at 75, has earned the right to experience some reflective musical moments, as well. And the most intriguing portions of his set--those passages that had the crowd listening in rapt silence--were the brief, lyrical solo introductions to “Yesterdays,” “Someday My Prince Will Come” and a lovely new ballad, which he promised would soon be recorded.

Tyner’s opening segment after intermission was far too brief, but lovely in its miniaturist focus. Moving through three quick numbers in rapid succession, he quickly gave way to Lewis.

Considerably more expansive, Lewis played long, rhapsodic, Art Tatum-tinged excursions through “Body and Soul” and “Willow Weep for Me.” But the high point of the second half arrived when Tyner returned to the stage to play “Autumn Leaves” and an extended blues with Lewis and his rhythm section of Michael Logan, electric keyboards; Charles Webb, bass; and Oscar Seaton, drums.

Countering and parrying between each other, the two pianists tossed musical challenges back and forth, each responding from their strengths. From Lewis, it was brisk, blues-drenched, crisply articulate lines; from Tyner, it was his trademark rich chording, offset by a capacity to draw penetrating tonal coloring from every part of the keyboard.

The final piece came to a kind of anticlimactic close, as the audience, clearly hoping for some kind of collaboration between all four pianists, was given no further encores. Piano-rama it may have been, but at least one 40-fingered, collective piano-rama would have been even better.