Nodding to Tradition While Pursuing the Ideal
Mario Pavone's jazz can possibly be heard two different ways. His gig at Iridium on Wednesday night had two traditions running through it: the rhythmic and harmonic grids of bebop and all that descends from it, and the cathartic tracing-in-air of free jazz.
But that's a pretty brain-first, ears-second way to put it. The mixture proposed by Mr. Pavone his third way represents its own tradition. And it's a pretty old one, encompassing music made in the 1960s by Ornette Coleman, Andrew Hill, Jackie McLean, Paul Bley and many others. These days the mixture sounds natural, and it's not hard to come by among younger players. But in his bass playing, his composing and his band leading, Mr. Pavone who recently turned 68 projects a brawny earnestness, as if this rapprochement of ideas were still something to fight for, a cause to defend.
Maybe more interesting, his band on Wednesday had two tenor saxophones in it another mini-tradition in jazz (Lester Young and Herschel Evans, Dexter Gordon and Wardell Gray, Johnny Griffin and Lockjaw Davis). But this is a tradition whose pleasure hardly needs to be explained. You've got two big, resonant wind instruments, harmonizing together on themes and trying to outdo each other in solos. That's enough; that's a lot.
