Chestnut Trio Stages Late Rally

Musicians often say that they get paid to endure the discomforts of touring. The reward for the performances, they add, is the sheer pleasure of making music.

There’s undoubtedly some truth to all of that, but the fact remains that taking flights, living in hotels and having to go on stage a few hours after arriving in town can have a negative impact upon the best of intentions.

The opening set by pianist Cyrus Chestnut’s trio at the Jazz Bakery on Tuesday night was a case in point. Despite placing all the notes in the right places, the group’s music had a weary quality--perhaps reflecting the fact that they reportedly had flown in earlier in the day.

At his best, Chestnut offers a vision of the jazz piano trio combining elements of soul jazz and funk, with references to Ahmad Jamal and Vince Guaraldi surfacing frequently. To his credit, there usually is no real sense of imitativeness to his own playing or to the ensemble arrangements. But when selections are offered with less than their usual vitality, as they were on Tuesday, the influences underlying Chestnut’s music become more apparent than usual.

In the opening part of the set, in particular, the tunes drifted dangerously close to ambitious cocktail jazz, its lightweight qualities emphasized by Chestnut’s tendency to fill his solos with melodic curlicues and filigrees in his right-hand passages--particularly apparent in his reworking of Beethoven’s “Fur Elise” and his own original piece, “Nippon Soul Connection.”

The quality of the proceedings improved dramatically with a long drum solo in which Neal Smith gave a spectacular display of playing with brushes rather than sticks. Chestnut kept the level high with a sensitive rendering of a spiritual, and the set’s high point--a rhythmically in-the-pocket romp through Chestnut’s “In the Underground”--was followed by a brief rendering of Duke Ellington’s “C Jam Blues.”

Why was the closing of the set so much better than the opening? Jet lag, perhaps. But whatever the cause, it was good to hear Chestnut, Smith and bassist Michael Hawkins gather their forces and return so quickly to their usual high level of performance.

The Cyrus Chestnut Trio at the Jazz Bakery, 3233 Helms Ave., L.A. Tonight through Sunday at 8 and 9:30 p.m., $25. (310) 271-9039.