Pianist transcends his audience

Denny Zeitlin may well have felt a bit like Dr. Jennifer Melfi, the psychiatrist in “The Sopranos,” when he looked out at his Jazz Bakery audience on Wednesday. In addition to being a world-class jazz pianist, Zeitlin has been a working psychiatrist for decades.

And when he saw the sparse audience, it wouldn’t be surprising if he encountered the same sort of abandonment transference experienced by the fictional Dr. Melfi when Tony Soprano suddenly quit psychotherapy.

Zeitlin -- working in powerfully interactive fashion with bassist Buster Williams and drummer Matt Wilson -- offered another of the imaginative, envelope-stretching sets that have long been his stock in trade.

In his rendering of Wayne Shorter’s “E.S.P.,” for example, he inserted an extraordinary solo passage, filled with a tumbling array of rhapsodic harmonies interspersed with lightning-fast melodic lines. His own tune, “Quiet Now,” performed frequently by Bill Evans, was restored to Zeitlin’s repertoire for the first time in years and offered in a harmonic setting vastly different from, but no less appealing than, Evans’ approach to the piece. And the soaring, lyrical renderings of “You Don’t Know What Love Is” and the children’s tune “Put Your Little Foot Right Out,” revealed more of Zeitlin’s superb talents.

Hearing this fine artist perform before a small audience raised the question of how much the maintenance of his parallel careers has taken away from his visibility as a musical artist.

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Denny Zeitlin Trio

Where: The Jazz Bakery, 3233 Helms Ave., Culver City

When: Today through Sunday, 8 and 9:30 p.m.

Price: $25

Contact: (310) 271-9039