Shearing Blends Improvisation, Humor

George Shearing has been a significant jazz artist for half a century. But, as his performance at the Jazz Bakery Wednesday night made clear, the 78-year-old, English-born pianist shows no signs of slowing down.

Working with his longtime musical companion, bassist Neil Swainson, Shearing played a characteristic set, balancing a few bebop numbers with a ballad or two, some solo piano numbers and his typically off-the-wall humor. As always, the music was meticulously played, as precise and to-the-point as a classical music recital.

What was different was the thoughtful, autumnal quality of the improvising. Shearing has always been an imaginative soloist, balancing his boppish lines with occasional glances at the piano jazz tradition and a dollop or two of classical references. And all those elements were present in this performance. But they were seasoned with musical hues of gold, brown and russet--harmonies with subtle undercurrents of dissonance, melodic phrasing that hovered in time-suspending rhapsodic moments.

Shearing and Swainson ripped through a unison rendering of the bebop classic “Dexterity” (in which fragments of Mozart kept creeping into the exchanges between the duo), a medium-tempo trip uptown to Duke Ellington’s “Drop Me Off in Harlem” and a brief, spirited rendering of Shearing’s own classic, “Lullaby of Birdland.” In some of the numbers, Shearing saluted his own musical past with the locked-hand, block chording he was famous for in the ‘40s and ‘50s.

Swainson soloed effectively on “Slow Boat to China,” and Shearing’s solo renderings of “Nature Boy” and “Good Morning, Heartache” (which he also sang) emerged as lovely musical cameos. A nearly full house, clearly familiar with Shearing, responded knowingly to his most inside musical references, their enthusiasm kindled by hip, jazz-inspired, opening remarks by the most improvisatory of all comedians, Mort Sahl.

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* George Shearing and Neil Swainson at the Jazz Bakery through Sunday. 3233 Helms Ave., Culver City. (310) 271-9039. $20 admission tonight and Saturday at 8:30 and 10 p.m. $18 admission Sunday at 6 and 8 p.m.