Pianist Ahmad Jamal brings a unique style to Blues Alley

On the evening of Tuesday, Dec. 28, the Ahmad Jamal Trio painted the air of Blues Alley with vibrant tones and timbres. The group played more with its ears than with its fingers, using subtle variations to convey a broad range of colorful moods.

Jamal is an under-appreciated piano legend whose evocative touch has been showcased by a career that spans over half a century. His influence on jazz cannot be overstated and is most evident in the modal melodies of Miles Davis. Jamal's musical deconstruction and re-assembly shows influences ranging from George Gershwin to Bela Bartok and Thelonius Monk. However, Jamal's unique harmonic and melodic sensibility permeates throughout.

One of the trio's signature elements is the paradox between orchestration and musical freedom. For much of the time, bassist James Cammak and drummer Idris Muhammad are locked into a composed groove with infrequent variation, intermittently alternating between A and B sections. Meanwhile, Jamal plays the melody essentially the same way for chorus after chorus, with a few brief measures of solos in between, all solidified by his ever-cyclical left hand.

But when Jamal goes out, he goes out. Anchored by the rhythm section, he is free to change from playing soft, sweet, single-note melodies to violent chromatic lines to dense, dark chordal voicings. He has the ability to go from a relaxed to extremely energetic feel without any change from the rhythm section.

Listeners can find a bit of almost any style within Jamal's playing, but no one will be satisfied without fully embracing his personal sound, which is sparse and impressionistic but far from easy listening. Jamal's greatest asset is his knowledge that less is more. By never overplaying, he gives every note and every rhythm importance and sincerity.

Like Davis, Jamal does not just play his instrument; he plays the ensemble. He often pauses between choruses and raises his hands together to listen to his band-mates. He directs them with finger pointings and verbal requests and at one point, actually stood over the drum set as if to supervise Muhammad's solo.

In breaking with jazz tradition, Cammak and Muhammad function more like the backing track for a pop music soloist than a traditional jazz rhythm section. On this particular evening, Cammak only "walked" for part of one song, and Muhammad only took one solo. They both played mostly simple, rock-based patterns interspersed with unison, rhythmic hits. Cammak was obviously enjoying himself, grinning at his band-mates throughout the show, but Muhammad sat hunched over his set with a white cap, black shirt, goatee, red-rimmed sunglasses and a cooler-than-thou smirk plastered across his face.

The Ahmad Jamal Trio is a group of virtuosos but not in the traditional sense. They are masters of silence, restraint, subtlety, contradiction and mystery.

The Ahmad Jamal Trio will be playing through the end of the year at Blues Alley.