Cliches Set Ablaze by Pete Jolly

Ask pianist Pete Jolly how long he, bassist Chuck Berghofer and drummer Nick Martinis have been playing together, and he’ll have to think.

“Is it 30 years?” he wondered aloud between performances Saturday at Spaghettini in Seal Beach. “I have to check with the fellas.”

Turns out Jolly, Berghofer and Martinis, a.k.a. the Pete Jolly Trio, have a history that goes back 35 years to their initial performances at Donte’s in the San Fernando Valley. That history goes a long way in explaining the seamless, almost telepathic performance they gave in an opening set that was anything but reserved.

Playing to a packed and bustling house (the group appears here monthly), Jolly forswore the traditional, opening, polite-and-quiet dinner set. Instead, the three jumped into a driving “Long Ago and Far Away” then followed with an equally heated “Dearly Beloved.” Even the seasonal stroll “Winter Wonderland” was played with a focus and fire uncharacteristic of West Coast cool.

Jolly has been an important contributor to the West Coast jazz movement from the time he joined Shorty Rogers’ quintet in 1954. Since then, in the bebop-inspired manner of trumpeter-arranger Rogers, Jolly has turned the cliche of West Coast cool on its ear, playing with an evolving, aggressively inventive style that is anything but laid back.

The purest example of the trio’s bop-fired tempos came on Dizzy Gillespie’s “Blue ‘n’ Boogie” as Jolly kept a torrent of notes flowing over the sizzle of bass and brushes. The pianist used unexpected harmonies to strike a certain ironic stance during a considered “Spring Can Really Hang You Up.”

He caught the eye of a certain audience member and smiled during “Winter Wonderland” just as he riffed on a line from “Pop Goes the Weasel.” The interplay among the trio at such demanding times was seemingly psychic.

Berghofer’s bass served to push the music at its fastest tempos. He soloed with stout sound and an ear for the melodic. Martinis used brushes to create steam heat but switched to sticks for solos that focused on his dancing snare work. The trio managed spontaneously called solos and silences at the end of “Spring Can Really Hang You Up” with amazing aplomb.

Surprisingly, the most modern-sounding number was the late composer-bandleader Rogers’ “Diablo’s Dance,” which dates back to the ‘50s. A staple of the Jolly trio, the tune’s quirky theme line and tempo shifts emphasized the threesome’s skill at musical mind reading.

Despite the distinguished length of his career, Jolly continues to experiment and advance, evidenced here by touches of Herbie Hancock modernism and a renewed playfulness that springs from his boyish personality. Jolly, one of the champions of West Coast jazz, is the perfect example of a jazz artist identified with an era but not bound by it.