Harvey Wainapel Can Be Judged by Company He Keeps

It didn’t matter which of three saxophones Harvey Wainapel chose Thursday night at Restaurant Kikuya in Huntington Beach. He played each with wit, purpose and supple confidence.

That’s exactly the kind of performance you’d expect from someone who has toured with Joe Lovano, one of the most important saxophonists of the ‘90s, and pianist McCoy Tyner, one of the most important jazz musicians of the past 30 years.

Wainapel, though not as well known as those two, is nonetheless in their world-class league. The San Francisco-based musician’s opening set Thursday, before a disappointingly small crowd, testified to that fact.

He’s accompanied by four like-minded Southern California-based musicians on the first of a three-night swing through Los Angeles and Orange County. (The group was scheduled to play Friday at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and will appear tonight at Steamers Cafe in Fullerton.)

Wainapel showed a knack for crafting familiar tunes according to his own vision (“Beautiful Love”), the ability to write enticing material (“Bueno y Perfecta”) and an eye for choosing stimulating hard-bop themes from others (Cecil McBee’s “Wilpan’s”). The tunes were all drawn from his recent third recording, “The Hang.”

The instrumentation on this date was the same as on the album (which features top pianist Kenny Barron, bassist Larry Grenadier, trumpeter Phil Grenadier and drummer Benny Wollesen).

But here the tunes were given less formal treatment by trumpeter Dave Scott, pianist Theo Saunders (with Wainapel for the first time), bassist Trey Henry and drummer David Hocker.

*

There were times during the opening set that Wainapel and the others worked tentatively, as though sounding out one another. Still, it didn’t take long to find common ground. And then the results were fantastic.

Such moments came frequently on Scott’s “Naivete,” a moderately paced number that recalled the kind of tunes Wayne Shorter was writing for Miles Davis in the late ‘60s and for Davis’ album “Filles de Kilimanjaro.” The blend of Wainapel’s soprano and Scott’s trumpet, backed by rolling, Tony Williams-inspired fills from drummer Hocker, made for gently beautiful, impressionistic moments.

Wainapel played tenor on “Beautiful Love,” showing firm control and a tone and attack reminiscent of Joe Henderson. His alto play on “Bueno y Perfecta,” a samba-paced takeoff on “Body and Soul,” was light and lively. Wainapel imparted a narrative flow to each of his improvisations, giving them the quality of a journey, a sense of process.

Scott, who’s been seen to advantage locally in two trumpet combos with Clay Jenkins, proved agile and smart, performing with special vigor on “Naivete.” Using his mute on both “Beautiful Love” and “I’m Old Fashioned,” he showed some Miles Davis sensitivity and an ability to craft his sound to the music around him.

Hocker and Henry both made significant contributions, setting grooves, adding embellishments and responding to the play around them.

Saunders isn’t a keyboardist dead-set on dazzling, and he soloed with an appropriate reserve, often inserting prickly harmonics with chords that seemed to jump from the piano. Occasionally, his accompaniment, especially during bassist Henry’s solos, seemed out of place, but just as often his spare support struck just the right note.

Expect the quintet to have pulled together even more tightly by the time they play Steamers tonight. That should make Wainapel’s sound, one certainly deserving of wider recognition, even more entrancing.

* The Harvey Wainapel Quintet plays tonight at Steamers Cafe, 138 W. Commonwealth Ave., Fullerton. 8:30 p.m. $3. (714) 871-8800.