Bassist Ray Brown Leads a Lively Master Class

The Ray Brown Master Class for Young Jazz Pianists is in session this week at Catalina Bar & Grill. “Ray Brown?” you might ask. “Isn’t he a bass player?” And the answer is, “Yes. And who spends more time working alongside pianists than bassists?”

And who could be more knowledgeable about good jazz piano playing than an artist who has performed with Bud Powell, Duke Ellington and Gene Harris and spent a substantial portion of his career in a fruitful alliance with Oscar Peterson? So, ambitious young pianists are urged to spend a set with Brown at Catalina this week as he continues his current developmental work in progress--a kind of mentoring partnership with pianist Geoff Keezer.

Like the previous pianist in the Brown trio--Benny Green--Keezer is a prodigious young talent. A teenager when he joined Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, he has recorded regularly under his own name for a decade.

But, as his playing made clear in Tuesday’s opening set, Keezer also is a pianist whose fiery technique and imaginative improvising benefit from Brown’s solid rhythmic foundation and his moderating musical presence. In a series of pieces ranging from the standard “Blue Room” to J.J. Johnson’s “Lament” to a grab bag of other works, Keezer generated one driving solo after another. His phrasing was alternately crisp and boppish, then lush and rhapsodic. At one point, he reached inside the piano to stop the strings with one hand, producing percussive-like sounds as he struck the keys with the other.

It was compelling, imaginative piano playing. It also was a bit chilly, at times, a bit lacking in communicativeness, as Keezer focused so much upon his instrument that he lost his capacity to connect with his audience. And that’s where Brown came in, gently framing Keezer’s free-roving piano excursions in subtle but insistent rhythms, adding warmth and context to moments otherwise lost in abstraction.

The experience was a fascinating example of musical mentoring on a very high level. Add the solid, dependable drumming of Kareem Riggins and the Brown trio’s performances make for a worthwhile musical destination this weekend--both for enterprising jazz pianists and jazz listeners in search of a beguiling evening of music.

* The Ray Brown Trio at Catalina Bar & Grill through Sunday. 1640 N. Cahuenga Blvd., (213) 466-2210. $17 cover tonight, Saturday at 8:30 p.m. and Sunday at 7 p.m.; $15 cover tonight, Saturday at 10:30 p.m. and Sunday at 9 p.m. Two drink minimum.