Coleman Proves He’s a Spirited Team Player

East Coast-based tenor saxophonist George Coleman, in town for a whirlwind series of Southland one-nighters, made an entertaining cocktail-hour stop at the Jazz Lobby in the Westin Los Angeles Airport Hotel on Wednesday night.

A veteran of gigs with Miles Davis, Max Roach, Slide Hampton and Lionel Hampton, Coleman, 65, showed up in fine company here as well, performing with pianist Harold Mabern, bassist Jeff Littleton and drummer Billy Higgins. And, heightening the appeal of his second set, he was joined on a pair of numbers by alto saxophonist Herb Geller.

Appearances of this sort are generally more oriented toward spontaneity than structure, and this was no exception. Coleman and Geller kicked off the opening number with a spirited romp through the bebop standard “Groovin’ High,” immediately digging into a series of solos on the tune’s familiar chord changes. Geller, 72, who has lived in Germany for many years, played with strength and imagination, his string of choruses driven by Higgins’ forceful drumming. Coleman answered with his own set of variations, enlivened by frequent excursions into the high harmonics of his instrument.

Coleman’s showcase number, however, was a brutally fast rendering of “Cherokee”--a tune with a long reputation as a skill tester. And he made the number even more demanding by starting with a stop-time chorus, one in which the rest of the trio simply played accented notes every few bars, obliging Coleman to fill in all the gaps with high-speed streams of notes. Virtuosic aspects aside, it was an impressive display of a mature artist at work, cruising easily through the changes, stretching the limits of his instrument and entertaining his listeners, all in one fell swoop.

The set concluded with a lovely Geller reshaping of “Sophisticated Lady” and an offbeat Coleman version of the Marvin Gaye hit “What’s Going On.” All in all, a lot of prime music packed into a short but potent set.

* The George Coleman Quartet performs Saturday at Rocco, 2930 Beverly Glen Circle, Bel-Air. $15 admission. Sets begin at 10 p.m. (310) 475-9807.