Woody Allen tribute in need of a director

It was an intriguing idea for an entry in the Hollywood Bowl’s summer jazz series: “Play It Again: The Movie Music of Woody Allen.” Jazz, after all, has been important to Allen as atmospheric settings for his films as well as his own sidebar career as a clarinetist specializing in early New Orleans jazz. Wednesday’s program, which included clips from several Allen films shown on giant video screens, was conducted by pianist-composer Dick Hyman, who has scored a dozen Allen films and who is a superb pianist in his own right, his playing enlivened by an insightful understanding of his instrument’s jazz history.

But he played the piano far too rarely, concentrating instead on conducting the ad hoc Hollywood Jazz Orchestra and providing brief between-songs introductions; neither chore represented his primary skills.

That left the potential success of the performance in the hands of the featured vocalists -- Ann Hampton Callaway, Nellie McKay, Curtis Stigers and Sandra Bernhard -- along with trumpeter Byron Stripling, guitarist Howard Alden, pianist Bryan Pezzone, drummer Ted Sommer, the Mitch Hanlon Singers and the HJO.

And complete success might very well been achieved had the evening been turned over to Callaway, McKay and Stripling. Callaway’s vivacious and too-brief numbers -- especially “Tico Tico” and “September Song” -- nearly stole the show. McKay was delightful with “They’re Either Too Young or Too Old,” and Stripling did a marvelous Louis Armstrong simulation on “Dream a Little Dream of Me.”

But comedian-actress Bernhard’s presence was a mystery -- one left unsolved by her off-center singing. Stigers can be an impressive singer, but his assignment of five numbers in the program’s second half was four too many. Pezzone’s fine playing on “Rhapsody in Blue” was marred by a sound mix overemphasizing the piano’s lowest notes.

And the production, with its frequent misconnections between the video projections and the live music, occasionally seemed even more befuddled than some of Allen’s lesser pictures.