Guitarist takes a new road: music without bop

Jazz is not exactly producing iconic figures these days. There are no new Charlie Parkers or Duke Ellingtons striding the 21st century stage. At least not yet. But the good news is that jazz continues to provide a fertile, receptive environment for creative innovation.

Guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel is an interesting case in point. Two or three years ago he was delivering some first-rate, if idiosyncratic, straight-ahead playing, often with saxophonist Mark Turner. But the music he brought to the Jazz Bakery on Wednesday took a considerably more exploratory path.

It was possible, in fact, to listen to the Rosenwinkel quartet’s performance as though bebop had never existed -- an extraordinary perspective, given the all-pervasive influence of the revolutionary music that emerged in the ‘40s. But there it was: a virtual absence of familiar bop riffs, extended bop harmonies or precise bop rhythms.

Instead, Rosenwinkel’s pieces offered turbulent, thickly textured waves of sound, mostly produced by Barney McCall’s impassioned keyboard work. Matthew Penman’s bass laid down structurally compelling ostinato lines, and Jonathan Blake’s drums added roiling layers of rhythm.

Rosenwinkel probed through this colorful gumbo of textures with exotic-sounding melodies, often made more so by his practice of singing, sotto voce, along with his guitar lines.

The result, in a set that included several pieces from his just-released album “Heartcore,” was music filled with strangely compelling fascination.

Swinging in its own indefinable fashion, open to improvisation unlimited by familiar jazz dialects, Rosenwinkel’s efforts provided convincing evidence that a new generation of imaginative young jazz artists is fast arriving.

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The Kurt Rosenwinkel Quartet

Where: The Jazz Bakery, 3233 Helms Ave., L.A.

When: Tonight,-Sunday, 8 and 9:30 p.m.

Price: $20

Contact: (310) 271-9039