Koz puts rhythm in smooth sound

It didn’t take long for Dave Koz to get his audience grooving at the Greek Theatre on Saturday night. But it never does. In a field that treasures communicability above all else, Koz has become one of the best at getting his message across.

That message, well defined on his new album, “Saxophonic,” is the notion that instrumental pop can be every bit as entertaining as vocal music. The subtext is that smooth jazz may have a few qualities that can appeal to fans of traditional jazz as well.

Over the last decade, Koz’s appearances have evolved from ungainly looking attempts at dancing-while-playing to the smoothly executed, carefully choreographed presentation he offered at the Greek. Moving lithely from one end of the stage to the other, interacting amiably (and theatrically) with the other players, he kept the proceedings upbeat, both visually and aurally.

It will probably annoy some of the jazz police for me to suggest that Koz actually played with an attractive, bitingly rhythmic attack -- but he did. Or that he played with emotional authenticity in a pair of lovely ballads, “Castle of Dreams” and “One Last Thing.”

Koz wasn’t an adventurous improviser (in the traditional sense), and there was little connection with the blues in his music.

But it was impossible to overlook that his overall repertoire -- musically and visually -- proved powerfully engaging to the audience. That’s a quality that was once ever present in mainstream jazz (think Louis Armstrong doing “Struttin’ With Some Barbeque,” or perhaps Dizzy Gillespie singing “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”) but is far too rare among today’s players.

In the evening’s opening set, keyboardist Jeff Lorber and trumpeter Chris Botti teamed for a few tunes that further revealed the musical creativity that sometimes courses, unnoticed, through the smooth jazz world. Their duo rendering of “My Funny Valentine,” in which Botti came into the audience to play directly to a listener, was a high point, as were the brisk, imaginative interchanges between the pair -- with added guest Marc Antoine on guitar -- in more typically smooth jazz offerings.