Clarke punctuates bass-player lineup

Stanley Clarke’s Web site, in a veritable orgy of multi-hyphenate descriptiveness, identifies no fewer than eight career paths for the bassist best known to jazz audiences as a principal member of the group Return to Forever. For the record, the descriptive labels are bassist, composer, conductor, orchestrator, arranger, songwriter, record producer and recording artist.

No wonder Clarke’s appearances as merely a bass player and bandleader (yet another career path) have become few and far between. His one-night program at the Key Club on Saturday was the first local club date under his own name in recent memory.

And the most impressive aspect of his hour-plus set was the fact that his extraordinarily virtuosic technical skills were as amazing as ever, displayed in an on-the-spot seminar defining the almost limitless potential of contemporary bass playing. In the opening portion of his set, Clarke shared the spotlight with Cameroon’s Armand Sabal-Lecco in a sequence of spectacular electric bass exchanges, whipping riffs back and forth, snapping the strings of each other’s instruments, generating waves of high-decibel sound and rhythm.

But Clarke was even more striking when he turned to his acoustic bass. Reaching from his own “Song to John” (for John Coltrane) and “School Days” to a spontaneous display of brilliant, fast-fingered solo improvising, he repeatedly affirmed why, with the late Jaco Pastorius, he is one of the primal godfathers of contemporary jazz bass playing.

That said, however, much of the set had the quality of a slam-dunk contest rather than a cohesive musical game. Individual players -- Clarke, Sabal-Lecco, violinist Karen Briggs, keyboardists Nick Smith and Mark Stephens, as well as horn players Bob McChesney, trombone; Brandon Fields, saxophone; and Ron King, trumpet -- all displayed their highflying, individual wares.

What was missing was the sort of inter-creativity that made Return to Forever such a musically rewarding ensemble. Obviously, it can be tough to find time to make group togetherness happen when so many other activities are calling.