Luckman group plays at top of form

The Luckman Jazz Orchestra did what it does best Saturday night: vividly display the galvanizing excitement of big band jazz. In existence for less than two years, operating on a modest budget, the ensemble -- conducted and inspired by James Newton -- is already one of the country’s finest musical organizations.

Saturday’s program in the acoustically accurate surroundings of the Luckman Performing Arts Complex was titled “Jazz Impressionism -- Dances, Blues & Ballads.” And many of the pieces -- especially Billy Strayhorn works such as “Blues in Orbit” and “Lady of the Lavender Mist” -- did indeed tap into the empathic associations between jazz and the lush harmonies of Impressionism.

The real musical substance of the program, however, reached well beyond the written music. At its roots there were superb solos (from players such as tenor saxophonist Bennie Maupin, alto saxophonists Ann Patterson and Charles Owens, trumpeters Oscar Brashear and Nolan Shaheed, trombonist Isaac Smith and pianist Jeffery Littleton), an extraordinary sense of collective ensemble swing and the remarkable group improvisation process Newton describes as “conduction.” In that last element, the players spontaneously responded to the conductor’s gestures, thrusts and body movements with brisk riffing and brilliantly colorful bursts of sound.

The result was a remarkable evening of music -- one that also included works by Wayne Shorter, Antonio Carlos Jobim and Newton. And the only question was why such an extraordinary ensemble is still not drawing overflow audiences to Luckman. As adept, talented and inventive as Wynton Marsalis’ Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, the Luckman Orchestra is fully capable of establishing a similarly important bastion for jazz on the West Coast.