Free Concerts Make It Clear: Jazz Really Is a Party

The International Jazz Party is an annual opportunity to celebrate the jazz connections that have existed for decades between Japanese and American musicians.

And this year’s free-to-the-public event was no exception, with three concerts last weekend at the Century Plaza Hotel featuring Frank Capp’s “Juggernaut” big band, tenor saxophonist Scott Hamilton, singer Stephanie Haynes, the Bill Berry L.A. Band and--from Japan--clarinetist Eiji Kitamura and guitarist Miya Miyanoue with a sterling Japanese rhythm section.

Sunday night’s climactic program showcased the Kitamura quartet (with Miyanoue as a guest artist) and the Berry L.A. Band. Kitamura, 70, is a veteran, active since 1950, with recordings and performances with Teddy Wilson, Woody Herman, Hank Jones, Harold Land and others. He has been a co-organizer of the Jazz Party with Berry since 1991.

His quartet offered a buoyant collection of numbers, ranging from “Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans?” to “Manha de Carnaval,” his fluent and articulate clarinet work contrasted well with Miyanoue’s blues-saturated guitar.

But it was pianist Hideaki Yoshioka (anchoring the rhythm section with bassist Masato Kobayashi and drummer Kuni Yashiro) who provided some of the hardest swinging solo offerings, especially during a bright set of choruses on “Stompin’ at the Savoy.”

It’s a shame that Berry’s L.A. Band isn’t heard more often. Yes, it consists of many of the Southland’s most visible jazz players--trumpeters Steve Huffsteter and Snooky Young, saxophonists Jack Nimitz, Sal Lozano and Don Menza, trombonist Alan Kaplan among them. When they play the Duke Ellington repertoire that makes up a large portion of the Berry book, their individuality comes out in a fashion not always heard in other contexts.

What made the Berry set even more fascinating was his inclusion of so many rarely heard Ellington numbers. The band romped through the multiple layers of the fascinating “Harlem Airshaft,” revived “Half the Fun” (with its images of Cleopatra) from the Ellington-Billy Strayhorn Shakespearean suite, used the right stylistic touch with the early (1934) “Stompy Jones” and explored the dark inner qualities of Strayhorn’s “Blood Count.”

More Ellingtonia emerged with the theme from the film “Paris Blues,” Nimitz’s brawny rendering of “Sophisticated Lady” and a three tenor (Menza, Hamilton and Terry Harrington) battle on Juan Tizol’s “Perdido.”

Equally appealing, the presence of Lozano in the lead alto chair gave the saxophone section an immediately distinctive sound, and Frank Szabo’s powerful, consistently dependable high note lead trumpet work led the entire ensemble with a take-no-prisoners intensity.

On the closing number--Al Cohn’s “Doodle-Oo”--Kitamura joined the L.A. Band for a brisk pairing, the combination of his swing-tinged clarinet and the band’s collective drive the perfect closer for a celebration of the true internationalism of jazz.