Jazz review: Anthony Wilson Trio with Jim Keltner at the Blue Whale

If you happened to be walking by Pro Drum Shop on Vine Wednesday night, or maybe glanced in the percussion room at Guitar Center, chances are the skins had gone quiet throughout the city as the second night of guitarist Anthony Wilson's month-long residency at the Blue Whale kicked off with a special guest in drum titan Jim Keltner. Attention among the faithful -- even those who never sat down at the instrument -- must be paid.

Even if you don't think you're familiar with Keltner, you are. A first-call session drummer in a storied career, Keltner has recorded with George Harrison, Wings, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, the Ramones -- frankly, it's probably easier to list which music legend he hasn't recorded with at this point.

And while Keltner's track record leans toward rock, Wilson wasn't stepping outside his home genre with his choice. Keltner also contributed shape-shifting percussion to some of Bill Frisell's spacey folk-jazz recordings, as well as the jazzy twists of Steely Dan's "Aja." Plus, if there were any doubt in his abilities to slip into any genre, one drummer in the crowd answered the question succinctly: "It's Jim Keltner, man."

But it was also Anthony Wilson, who's enough of a master craftsman in his own right that there were probably no shortage of guitar lovers in the Blue Whale's packed, standing-room-only crowd as well. Wilson's "Campo Belo" was an arresting take on the music of Brazil, and the live guitar recording "Seasons" is maybe rivaled only by 1981's "Friday Night in San Francisco" by Paco DeLucia, Al DiMeola and John McLaughlin for six-string fireworks. And this doesn't even count his collaborations, which includes work with Diana Krall, Willie Nelson and, by the way, his father in bandleader Gerald Wilson.

Jazz review: Keith Jarrett at Walt Disney Concert Hall

Not unlike the old joke about going to watch a fight and seeing a hockey game break out, what happens when you go to a Keith Jarrett show and a comfortable, even relaxed concert experience breaks out?

This isn't to disparage Jarrett's music on Tuesday night at Walt Disney Concert Hall, which was another of his signature, engrossing evenings of solo, in-the-moment creation that lie somewhere between mind-scrambling instrumental skill and the harnessing of pure magic. Instead this is a byproduct of Jarrett's often prickly performing persona, an unfortunate elephant in the room during his concerts, which in the past have found the mercurial pianist storming off stage at the sound of coughing or sternly scolding amateur photographers in the audience for snapping his picture, as he did during a 2010 show at Disney Hall.

And whether the result of a crowd fully aware and respectful of Jarrett's particular rules (a wave of preemptive coughing crested through the room and fell to laughter before the pianist even walked onstage) or a mellowing of Jarrett's usual sensitivities, Tuesday's concert bore far less of the best-behavior audience tension that can shade Jarrett's appearances and instead allowed even more room for the music to be the focal point.

Jazz review: Billy Childs and Kronos Quartet at Walt Disney Hall

Niceness met vision in an ambitious collision of jazz and neoclassical at Disney Hall on Sunday night. Niceness won.

Although the Grammy-winning talents of Billy Childs, Kronos Quartet and Bill Frisell packed potential for chemistry, the energies tended to dissipate.

The intensity focused mid-evening with the pointy-booted Kronos, whose stand-alone segment brought industrial aspiration to the agitated "Aheym (Homeward)," by Bryce Dessner of the art-pop group the National.

The four bows stroked and slapped with familial elasticity, bringing out the composition's snap-back power and hypnotic magnetism. Frank Gehry's airy modern hall was built for this.

Childs' all-star quartet glowed with a Californian spirituality, the pianist's "Aaron's Song" and "Hope in the Face of Despair" owing as much to film music as to jazz. Despite the klezmer plaint of Steve Wilson's saxophones, the latter piece would have seemed little more than pondering puzzlement if Childs hadn't credited its inspiration to "Maus," Art Spiegelman's dark comix biography of his Auschwitz-survivor father.

Jazz review: Ben Goldberg's Orphic Machine at the Blue Whale

"At this point you might be wondering," the laconic Ben Goldberg said at the front of a nine-piece ensemble at the Blue Whale Monday night. "What is an Orphic Machine?"

The question hung in the air before the standing-room-only crowd for a few long, quiet moments before Goldberg turned back to his ensemble and led them through another knotted and occasionally spooky composition marked by dazzling interplay. Initially led by Carla Kihlstedt's gently plucked violin and a thicket of chiming percussion from vibraphonist Kenny Wollesen and drummer Ches Smith, who worked a variety of small gongs and noisemakers, the piece transformed into a bent sort of torch song behind Kihlstedt's delicate vocals and a muted trumpet solo by Ron Miles that gave way to a smoky turn on piano by Myra Melford.

Needless to say, it was a fair question.

Jazz review: Kurt Rosenwinkel at the Musicians Institute

There was a certain symmetry between Saturday night's concert by Kurt Rosenwinkel's Standards Trio at the Musicians Institute and the bustle of the Academy Awards preparing to launch a little over a block away at Hollywood and Highland. Much like Sunday night's show, whose best picture nominees have a certain backward-looking flair ("The Help," "The Artist" and "Midnight in Paris"), Rosenwinkel trafficked in a vintage, deeply swung cool that may be rooted in vintage jazz, but its spirit and drive remained fresh.

Presented as part of the Jazz Bakery's Movable Feast series, Rosenwinkel is not the sort of modern jazz artist armed with a bank of effects pedals. Instead he lets his guitar speak with a near crystalline clarity, turning the focus on Rosenwinkel's sleek mix of chords and finger-blurring runs that dovetailed nicely with the show's location. The Musicians Institute has a reputation for sharpening local guitarists' fingers --there was at least one gig bag slung on an audience member's shoulder as he made his way into the room, and odds are he wasn't alone.

With the room buzzing at near capacity, Rosenwinkel launched into a mid-tempo piece from Paul Chambers' 1959 album "Go" that started the night with an elegant, easygoing swing. With a thimble-sized microphone at his cheek, Rosenwinkel scatted along with his playing as his fingers glided up and down his fretboard, a potentially distracting addition that for the most part faintly underscored his serpentine melodic path. Backed by young percussion phenom Justin Falkner and bassist Ugonna Okegwo, Rosenwinkel cycled through an array of tastefully propulsive ideas as the song gathered intensity atop the rhythm section's compact, insistent foundation.

Jazz review: Chucho Valdes, Poncho Sanchez and Terence Blanchard

A deeply soulful and often underrated genre, Latin jazz has been the focus of a controversy lately. When the Recording Academy decided to restructure the Grammy Awards this year and in the process killed the Latin jazz category, the decision was met with wrath by some of the most influential musicians in the field. Latin jazz still matters, they asserted. It deserves to be cherished.

The timing, then, couldn’t have been better for Thursday’s performance by veteran Cuban pianist Chucho Valdés and his Afro-Cuban Messengers at Walt Disney Concert Hall, just days after the Grammy ceremony.

Wonderfully unpredictable, luminous and mercurial, the one-hour set left the capacity audience pining for more. The conclusion was inevitable: So this is what we’d be missing if Latin jazz was silenced.

Valdés is the son of Bebo Valdés, perhaps the most exquisite pianist and bandleader from the golden era of Cuban music. During the ’70s, Chucho stepped boldly into the future by founding Irakere -- the now-mythical group that pioneered the fusion of Cuban folklore, jazz and rock.

Jazz review: Trio M at the Musicians Institute

If drummer Matt Wilson ever decides to hang up his sticks, it seemed like he had a future in comedy toward the close of his performance with Trio M at the Musicians Institute on Friday night, part of the Jazz Bakery's ongoing Movable Feast concert series.

Introducing a few songs by his trio-mates pianist Myra Melford and upright bassist Mark Dresser, Wilson dryly encouraged the crowd to "support the economy" by buying the group's new CD "Guest House" on the way out, tying the act the part of both the 99% and the 1% before finally insisting the doors would be locked until everyone bought a copy. "If you buy both," he added in reference to the Trio's 2007 Cryptogramophone debut "Big Picture," "We might let you have your car."

Wilson's buoyant mood was also reflected in the members of the trio, each of whom broke out in smiles at various points during the nearly 90-minute concert. And why not? A three-headed hydra of powerhouse improvisers and bandleaders, Trio M is maybe most notable for how democratically the spotlight is shared when someone isn't at the microphone with introductions, making the group's music often sound like a lively conversation among longtime friends.

Jazz review: Chris Dingman Quartet at the Blue Whale

By any measure, 2011 was a good year for jazz vibraphone. Led by headline-grabbing recordings by New York City's Chris Dingman and Chicago's Jason Adasiewicz, the instrument is enjoying an intriguing mini-resurgence of late, and that's before even considering the year's albums by artists both new and familiar in Gary Burton, Stefon Harris and Warren Wolf.

A lush and immersive recording, Dingman's brilliant debut "Waking Dreams" is thick with rich ensemble playing, an emphasis that gains strength with turns by fellow top-flight talents Fabian Almazan and Ambrose Akinmusire to flesh out Dingman's atmospheric vision. In bringing the album to Little Tokyo's the Blue Whale Tuesday night, however, Dingman was backed by a cracking band of L.A. musicians on the rise in their own right that included pianist-composer Josh Nelson and a rhythm section of Hamilton Price and Zach Harmon, who backed buzz-heavy keyboardist Austin Peralta in an impressive show last spring.

Working with a smaller ensemble, Dingman's intricate musicianship shifted more to the center of his loosely tangled compositions, which bore little sign of being in unfamiliar hands thanks to a taut rhythmic foundation and a rich, near-telepathic interplay between Dingman and Nelson. Working around a three-note figure in set-opener "Clear the Rain," Nelson's piano curlicued around Dingman's vibraphone explorations with such subtle yet empathetic support it bordered on subliminal.

Jazz review: Woody Allen's New Orleans band at Royce Hall

A little bit of Gotham came west Thursday night, as Woody Allen’s New Orleans band played at UCLA.  Though the music wasn’t as momentous as the Eddie Condon Town Hall concerts of the 1940s, you’d never know it from the audience. Three generous encores and you’d think it was Woodstock and they’d just seen Hendrix.

Were they discerning jazz fans?  Likely not, though one of the world’s most celebrated filmmakers pursuing his hobby is apparently enough to nearly fill Royce Hall.  Allen’s brief and humble remarks made it clear that the music was the star. This outfit, which plays weekly at New York's Cafe Carlyle, has a good time while playing well, and transmits its enthusiasm.  College students, revved up on an 80-year-old jazz style, just might investigate it further.

Jazz review: Guitarist Timothy Young at Little Temple

He wasn't on tour. His band hadn't met in months. His new record didn't even have a label yet.

But guitarist Timothy Young and his far-flung trio mates found their calendars intersecting in Los Angeles, so they knocked together a "pre-release party" Tuesday at East Hollywood's Little Temple. An inspiration, it turned out.

Tumbleweed Young forsook Seattle for Tinseltown five years ago in search of session gold. Besides captaining his own projects, he's made lasting runs with eclectic keyboardist Wayne Horvitz, veteran jazz violinist Michael White and omnivorous Brit rocker David Sylvian, and has worked with a range of artists from Beck to Fiona Apple.

Young's upcoming "Gravitational Lensing," though, sounds like a hellbent blast from his youth. (He's 41.) Dinosaur riffs, space trips and heavy stoner blues dominate, lightened with intervals of Renaissance pluck, horse-drawn folk and punk jazz, and shaded with an artful palette of fuzzy to shivery guitar tones.