REVIEW
Monterey Jazz Festival 50th Anniversary All-Stars

Where: Madame Walker Theatre.

When: Thursday night.

Bottom line: Rapport on the bandstand feeds off rapture in the audience.

By Jay Harvey

jay.harvey@indystar.com

A long-running road show for a jazz institution did more than make a stop here and offer a tribute concert Thursday night.

The Monterey Jazz Festival 50th Anniversary All-Stars practically brought the festival in concentrated form to the stage of the Madame Walker Theatre.

The crowd showered appreciation on the band from the first number -- Dizzy Gillespie's "Be-Bop" -- on out. Solos frequently were punctuated with shouts and bursts of applause.

Guest singer Nnenna Freelon charmed with her swooping, sassy phrasing and eloquent hand and arm choreography. Octogenarian reedman James Moody -- his gravelly, lisping speaking voice an effervescent delight all by itself -- rewarded the crowd with his inimitable hit "Moody's Mood for Love" for the first time on the 54-city tour.

x Trumpeter Terence Blanchard repaid the audience for its affectionate version of "Happy Birthday" to him in the first half, led by a scat-singing Moody, by offering two moving excerpts from his "Tale of God's Will: A Requiem for Katrina," for which he won a Grammy last month.x

Blanchard, turning 46, represents the band's middle generation along with pianist Benny Green, who also serves as its musical director with a light, gracious touch. Blanchard's regular rhythm section, fitting in well to this specially assembled band, are a couple of fully developed musicians in their 20s. And Moody, of course, was playing the Monterey Jazz Festival before any of them were born, as he gleefully pointed out. The program deftly blended intimacy and ruckus-raising, earnestness and fun.

With oblique figures from bassist Derrick Hodge gradually centering on a wistful underpinning for Hoagy Carmichael's "Skylark," Freelon offered one of her most creative interpretations of the evening. At another point, Hodge and Green, with pinpoint support from drummer Kendrick Scott, glided with imperturbable reflectiveness through Clare Fischer's "Pensativa."
There were solid instrumental tributes to the era that generated the Monterey fest in 1958 with "Be-Bop" and John Coltrane's "Straight Street." And Scott was represented as a composer, showing more delicacy than many percussionists who write, in the remarkable "Journey," featuring Freelon at her most ethereal.

Each half ended with all six musicians gradually turning up the heat under a standard -- the Sammy Cahn-Jule Styne chestnut "Time After Time" in the first half and Duke Ellington's "Just Squeeze Me" for a finale. The latter opened out from a coy vocal duet by Freelon and Moody into a strutting showcase for everyone. Clearly touched by the audience's warmth, Green generated a particularly generous yet compact solo.

Call Star reporter Jay Harvey at (317) 444-6402.