Seven Steps to Jaco

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June 24, 2005

Trying to Solve a Bass Puzzle

By BEN RATLIFF

In the 1970's and 80's, Jaco Pastorius was the Charlie Parker of the electric bass, spooking his colleagues with his brilliance; he was also a daredevil composer and record maker and one of the most imposing, volatile stage performers in jazz. He could blot out his context.

And though he died in 1987, he still can. In "Seven Steps to Jaco," a JVC Jazz Festival concert on Wednesday night, the concert's central question - how do you do this guy justice? - overshadowed the music itself.

Obviously, you round up some bassists and other musicians who played with him, and others who bear his influence. Luckily, Gil Goldstein, the arranger and pianist who was the concert's musical director, had a few better ideas of his own.

One was to use the Flux string quartet where Pastorius normally used a horn section. Another was to include rare Pastorius compositions in the program. (Among them were an unrecorded 12-tone piece, "Thoughts in Florida," played by Matthew Garrison with an astringent string arrangement by Mr. Goldstein, and "Dania," rendered by a band that included the saxophonist Ira Sullivan and the bassist Christian McBride.)

Yet another was to treat Pastorius the improviser as a maker of sacred texts. Jeff Berlin, the bassist, played a version of the bebop standard "Donna Lee" that Pastorius used as the opening track on his first solo album, in 1976. One section was transcribed directly from Pastorius, and Mr. Berlin played it in unison with the strings; while the percussionist Don Alias pushed the rhythm ahead, the strings held it back. The performance became a tangle.

Otherwise, the bassist Oteil Burbridge, a member of the Allman Brothers Band, played a placid, impressive solo version of "Three Views of a Secret," and the steel-drum players Othello Molineaux and Leroy Williams referred to an old recording (again, Pastorius's first solo album) on the song "Opus Pocus." The master's sons, the drummer Julius Pastorius and the Jacoesque bassist Felix Pastorius, played on "Havona," and Victor Wooten and Steve Bailey, on fretted and fretless bass, played a communicative duet on "Portrait of Tracy." The higher the level of virtuosity, the better the show got. But somehow - not that listening to nine different bassists in a row was necessarily the cause - the results were rather dull.

A new version of Steps Ahead, the jazz-fusion band now led by the vibraphonist Mike Maineri, opened the evening; the current lineup includes the guitarist Mike Stern, the bassist Richard Bona and the drummer Steve Smith. (The tenor saxophonist Michael Brecker was supposed to tour with the group this summer, but Mr. Maineri read a statement that Mr. Brecker was undergoing treatment for serious health problems. Mr. Brecker's management said yesterday that he had received a diagnosis of myelodysplastic syndrome, a blood disorder.) In his place was the saxophonist Bill Evans, who played fast, thick and very stylized Coltrane-inspired improvisations in pieces dating back 25 years, like "Oops" and "Pools."

Mr. Stern and Mr. Bona also dug in at various places, flashing bravura technique. But Mr. Mainieri scored the set's best moment: a slow, deliberate, harmony-rich arrangement of Billy Strayhorn's "Lush Life" for four mallets.