Dave Brubeck, Adaptable and Eclectic With New Ensemble

Faced with the need to either cancel several engagements in the Southland or perform them with a completely new ensemble, Dave Brubeck not surprisingly took the more adventurous course.

On Sunday afternoon, at Pepperdine’s Smothers Theatre, he led an ad-hoc quartet consisting of his son, Danny Brubeck, on drums; Andy Suzuki on saxophone; and Robert Hurst on bass in a performance that was clearly as inspiring for Brubeck as it was for the jam-packed crowd.

Like so many other Americans, the regular members of his group found it impossible to work their way out of the thicket of problems generated by last week’s terrorist attacks.

And Brubeck, opening the program with a characteristically wry introductory commentary, explained to the crowd that everything should be fine, since he’d already planned the program with the new quartet by calling out the names of various tunes.

“And whenever we came up with something that everyone knew,” said Brubeck, “it was in.”

The resulting lineup of material was somewhat more eclectic than the numbers that one ordinarily hears at Brubeck performances.

However, there were plenty of familiar items, as well, ranging from the lovely Brubeck original “In Your Own Sweet Way” (perhaps most familiar via Miles Davis’ classic rendering) to the inevitable “Take Five.”

There was the added bonus of three numbers from an upcoming album titled “The Crossing,” which displayed the capacity to combine memorable melodies with brightly swinging rhythms that has long been Brubeck’s stock in trade.

And what about that new, if temporary, ensemble?

In fact, the quartet had already had the benefit of a few earlier dates in Costa Mesa.

Even granted that prior on-the-spot rehearsal opportunity, however, the new ensemble came together with surprising cohesion.

It helped that Danny Brubeck has been hearing his father’s piano playing for his entire life, that Hurst is one of the most adaptable bassists in jazz, and that Andy Suzuki has solid, straight-head jazz credentials not always apparent in his pop instrumental outings.

True, the music did not possess the symbiotic interchanges present in the classic Brubeck/Paul Desmond combination, or the brisk efficiency of his current group.

But it had other fascinating qualities, most notably the opportunity to experience a marvelous pianistic patriarch using the power of his presence and the stimulus of his creativity to inspire a group of young artists to deliver a program of imaginative and entertaining music.