Charlie Haden's Quartet West opened its late set at the new club Le Poisson Rouge on Wednesday with Charlie Parker's “Passport" and got right into it. The saxophonist Ernie Watts began as if he were in the middle of things, with a controlled medium projection, playing fast and smoothly and using language from Parker and Coltrane, devices that coolly showed how much he knew.
Then Alan Broadbent put in an organized piano solo with easy-to-follow harmonic motion. And before the theme came around again, there was a heart-stopping duet between Mr. Haden, who lined out slow scale patterns on bass with gravitas, and Rodney Green on drums, playing lightly and swinging heavily. This was a group playing at a high level: every member transformed the song, wrote his signature in it. The set deflated a bit after that, but it almost had to.
Mr. Haden has described Quartet West, which he has kept together since 1987 with nearly the same lineup (Mr. Green recently replaced Larance Marable), as a band that tries to evoke the atmosphere of the 1940s. All four musicians were based in Los Angeles until Mr. Green, a young Philadelphian, took over on drums, and the name also has to do with the idea of old Hollywood culture. The players have conjured this atmosphere with repertory choices, using songs made known by romantic singers from that time. They've done it with string arrangements, too.
