Newly turned 79, Bennie Maupin extended the metal support for his tall bass clarinet, parked his soprano sax on its vertical cone, hooked his tenor sax around his neck and looked around to see that his band was settled in. Then he took off and never came down.
Maupin led with a solo improvisation -- a bit mournful, a bit thoughtful, a lot beautiful -- before New Orleans drummer Kenny Sara, Polish bassist Darek Oles and world percussionist Eric McKain kicked into the kind of healing midtempo African riff groove that would most characterize the first set. From his 1960s days as a Blue Note regular, through his fusion and funk excursions with Miles Davis and the Headhunters, through his latter-day incursions into chamber jazz, Maupin has never stopped learning and reassessing, so he's equipped for any situation. And he took the nightclub's temperature perfectly, giving the hard-drankin' jazz fans a good belt, lending the intellech'al avanteers substantial skronks of atonality, and never letting the spirit outstrip the meat. How does a musician manage to please all and condescend to none? That's how.
Now drawing on substantial experience together, the sextet has achieved a wonderfully relaxed group feel. David Arnay's synthesizer sustains and rhythmically sensitive piano interjections were the mayonnaise in the harmonic sandwich. McKain kept the air fresh -- perky hand drums, contagious bead-shaker work, bedroom bells straight out of Philly soul -- while keeping up between-song conversations with the crowd!
Oles justified Maupin's lavish praise with typically exemplary pluckin' on the standup bass. Kids, if you want to get hired on the four-string, listen to why everybody from Charles Lloyd to Peter Erskine keeps Mr. Oleszkiewicz's phone number: not cuz he's a show-off, but because they can set a metronome to his rhythm and receive a full week's protein from his glowing, rounded tone. Sara's drums? If you can't dance to that slap-happy beat, you can't dance.
Maupin's improvisations on his three very different woodwinds flowed with natural logic and a splash of hot sauce; his smile showed he especially dug tangling with stretchy younger trumpeter Chris Williams, whose easy spark has put him in increasing demand within L.A.'s exciting jazz scene.
In fact, Maupin (on soprano) and Williams quite cracked each other up during Miles Davis' "All Blues" -- snickering because they closed the set with such an obvious standard, but laughing harder because they shattered the cool with such heedless abandon. The audience's ensuing roars and claps left their irreverence completely unpunished, either by us or by the Miles in the sky.