THE LEWIS NASH QUINTET, Sheraton City Centre.
Monday was a night for purists.
In the latest installment of the Jazz at the Sheraton series, drummer Lewis Nash and his four sidemen (piano, bass, vibes and sax) played a wide variety of straight-ahead jazz with verve and inventiveness while remaining solidly within the confines of the genre.
No showboating or technically dazzling ad libs simply for the sake of showing off. These were musicians united in a quest to produce good music for its own sake.
This was the sort of jazz one would hear at a smoky hole-in-the-wall Harlem club that only the cognoscenti know about, where drunken teenagers looking to impress their dates need not apply. Five guys, most of them middle-age at least, laying down a groove, embellishing it, improving on it, exploring the chords, not forcing anything. It was the kind of music where you sit back and let it wash over you, sometimes tapping your toe, sometimes talking to your neighbor, sometimes enthusiastically applauding an inspired solo, drinking your drink, soaking it all in, digging it.
Such relaxed and highly refined musicianship is in short supply in the modern world.
The program consisted of mostly traditional tunes — "Lester Leaps In," "Joy Spring" — with a few originals thrown in. As the leader, Nash himself had his moments, but a drummer necessarily plays mostly in the background. The spotlight usually belonged to guest tenor saxophonist Huston Person, who displayed a delightfully pure husky tone and a playful, spontaneous style. Pianist Mulgrew Miller was an excellent foil for Person, an excellent soloist in his own right — and boy, could he play in a broad range of styles. One moment you'd swear he was Ramsey Lewis' long-lost twin, while in the next he was a reincarnated Erroll Garner.
Vibraphonist Steve Nelson was fine though not outstanding, but bassist Peter Washington was fantastic. One got the feeling that he could display the technical virtuosity of, say, Christian McBride had he wanted to. But given the group's penchant for playing within themselves, he confined his solos to inventiveness without bombast.
The evening's only low point was the encore, a standard blues tune that was overly similar to its predecessor.
E-MAIL: aedwards@desnews.com