His Beat Goes On

Assertions that drummer Billy Higgins appears on more jazz recordings than any other musician aren’t easy to prove. But there’s no argument that he has appeared on hundreds if not thousands of albums during a 45-year career in which he’s played with Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Sonny Rollins, Dexter Gordon, Herbie Hancock, Joe Henderson, Pat Metheny and on and on.

A liver transplant in 1996 slowed the perpetually active drummer somewhat, but he’s again busy as ever. Over the weekend, Cal State Fresno held a three-day Billy Higgins Jazz Festival in which the Los Angeles-born musician appeared with pianists Cedar Walton and John Hicks, saxophonist Jackie McLean and others. This week, he’s playing at Chicago’s Jazz Showcase as a member of saxophonist Charles Lloyd’s band.

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Sunday night, Higgins squeezed in a date at Steamers Cafe in Fullerton, fronting a trio that backed singer Cynthia Utterbach, a longtime friend. As always, Higgins was a whirlwind of percussive energy, hammering out polyrhythms, accents and unusual drum and cymbal combinations, often at dazzling speeds. The one constant during his varied performance, as has been true throughout his career, was his beaming smile.

He used the opening number without the singer to showcase his trademark cross-handed exchange of snare and cymbals, a feat that remains amazing no matter how many times you’ve seen it.

With Utterbach, Higgins stirred up tension with his brushes on the ballad “That’s All,” exchanged percussive patterns to match Utterbach’s scat-singing on Antonio Carlos Jobim’s “Wave” and layered rhythmic counterpoints on Duke Ellington’s “Caravan.” Higgins seemed to surprise even himself, judging by the ever-changing look on his face, with the varied combinations of snare, tom-toms and cymbals he produced.

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New Jersey-born Utterbach, who spent some 20 years in Los Angeles, is a singer with a full, rich tone and accurate pitch. Time and again, she struck the right balance between lyric and embellishment, sometimes staying cannily behind the beat while never overdoing asides or accents in the overblown style of Whitney Houston and other pop divas.

With support from extremely graceful pianist Lanny Hartley and bassist Jeffrey Littleton, Utterbach proved herself to rank among the jazz world’s best vocalists.