Bowl series ends with shift out of the blue

Wednesday’s final event in the 2004 Jazz at the Hollywood Bowl series was originally announced as “A Night With Blue Note” -- a tribute to the esteemed jazz record label featuring appearances by Van Morrison and Dianne Reeves with special guests Kurt Elling, Stefon Harris, Raul Midon and Greg Osby. Somewhere along the way, however, it was transformed into a lengthy evening with Morrison and a brief opening set by Reeves. The scheduled guest stars were nowhere to be seen, though they were still listed in the program.

Reeves was the high point of the night -- at least in a jazz sense, which was, after all, what the evening was supposed to be about. Her venture into a few tunes outside the Great American Songbook -- especially a thoughtful rendering of Leonard Cohen’s “Suzanne” -- revealed an attractive expansion of her interpretive palette. Too bad she didn’t have space on the program to offer more.

Morrison obviously was the drawing card for an unusually well-attended summer jazz event. But despite his recent signing to Blue Note, his jazz credentials are nil, and his music fits far more appropriately into the pop/blues category.

Even viewed from that perspective, however, Morrison’s program was a too-long, dully repetitious journey through the rhythmically stiff versions of urban blues that he has been exploring since the early ‘70s. The selections from his new (and ironically well titled) Blue Note debut album, “What’s Wrong With This Picture?,” underscored the narrowing range of his recent creative accomplishments.

Given that narrow range, it was hard to understand why he neglected to include some of the major selections from his collection of hits -- “Crazy Love,” “Moondance” and “Brown Eyed Girl,” among others.

Morrison has always had avid supporters and acerbic critics, with his music providing plenty of opportunities to fuel both points of view. But the real problem Wednesday was not Morrison’s music, but its presence on a program billed as a jazz concert.

It’s understandable that the Bowl needs to fill its vast expanse of seats, and Morrison clearly did that. But using him to pump up the attendance for a jazz event is comparable to using Manheim Steamroller to boost the crowd for an L.A. Philharmonic concert. That’s not likely to happen. And jazz, as America’s most distinctive cultural creation, surely deserves at least as much respect and consideration as European-based classical music.