Quintet of Young Artists Marks Growth of L.A. Scene

Studying and practicing the art of jazz can be a difficult process for a young player, and opportunities to display one’s growing talents before receptive listeners don’t exactly turn up every day. But for four years the Young Artists Jazz Series has been making a modest but gallant effort to offer such showcases, usually on Monday nights at Catalina Bar & Grill.

The series’ fourth anniversary was celebrated Monday with an appearance by the quintet of trombonist Isaac Smith, alto saxophonist Zane Musa, pianist Donald Vega, bassist Carlos Puerto and drummer Tony Austin, with an added cast of players sitting in to join the party. And the event further underscored what has become increasingly apparent at performances by young Southland jazz artists: that a generation of talented, skilled and well-prepared young players, most in their mid-20s, already has arrived on the local jazz scene.

Smith is one of the more visible of the L.A. young lions, as is Musa, his partner in the quintet’s front line. Both players are formidable technicians, capable of high-speed delivery.

Smith, in fact, wasted no time getting down to business in the opening tune, “What Is This Thing Called Love,” moving quickly from the opening, blues-inflected portion of his solo to a convoluted series of choruses filled with rapid-fire arpeggiating, scouring the horn from top to bottom.

Musa’s playing was similarly quick and labyrinthine, and when 19-year-old tenor saxophonist Kamasi Washington joined the ensemble, he too poured out notes with profligate abandon.

Other players came on stage to sit in for a tune or two--alto saxophonist Schiela Gonzales, pianist Sean O’Connell, drummer Ron Manaog, tenor saxophonist Michael Hammond and singer Gretchen Parlato--each in the process of finding their own musical voices.

Granting the dynamic energies of youthful jazz making, the one cautionary observation that can be made about the playing of Smith, Musa, Washington and most of the others is that notes alone don’t make ideas, more notes don’t make more ideas, and jazz soloing at its best is a process of inventive construction rather than emotional venting.

Perhaps appropriately, it was the work of Vega--who has, through his immigration problems and various surgeries, experienced far more difficulties than most--that provided the best signpost toward the mature, considered music making that still lies in the future pathways of these talented young artists.