Three’s Company for Rushen and Playful Pals

Patrice Rushen doesn’t play favorites when it comes to different areas of the music business. Name a genre, and it’s a fair bet that she’s tried it out successfully, from rhythm and blues to mainstream jazz, from crossover fusion to film and television scoring.

But the best way to hear this versatile keyboardist in action is in a basic piano trio format. And it’s even better when she is accompanied--as she was Friday night at the Jazz Spot--by bassist Darek Oles and drummer Ndugu Chancler.

Rushen’s interaction with Chancler, in particular, was fascinating to hear. The musical connection between the two in many ways paralleled the sort of free-floating interaction that took place between Bill Evans and a series of bassists. Since Chancler is a drummer, however, the linkage was purely rhythmic, rather than tonal, with riffs and patterns tossed back and forth between the pair in what can only be described as a musically joyous fashion.

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Performing an attractive selection of tunes ranging from Herbie Hancock’s “Dolphin Dance” and Wayne Shorter’s “Footprints” to Duke Ellington’s “In a Sentimental Mood” and originals by Rushen and Oles, the trio prompted a continuous flow of enthusiastic applause from a full-house crowd.

The reaction often was triggered by Chancler, one of the rare drummers who manages to mix virtuosic technical skills and an inventive musical imagination with a jovial sense of humor.

Oles, in his soloing--notably so in an improvised romp through “Dolphin Dance”--revealed a gift for musical paraphrase, playfully circling his variations around the framework of the tune’s melody.

But it was Rushen’s piano work, which was especially effective when she was generating powerful chordal passages juxtaposed against delicately ornamented right hand melodic filigrees, that was the central source from which the music flowed. Diversity may be her middle name, but--on this night, at least--entertaining, hard-swinging jazz was Rushen’s game.