JAZZ REVIEW : A Flawless Bill Holman Band at the Biltmore

Monday evening, playing for a capacity crowd at the Biltmore’s Grand Avenue Bar, Bill Holman offered renewed evidence that his is one of the most original minds in orchestral jazz.

When Holman writes an arrangement of a familiar tune, it undergoes the equivalent of major plastic surgery; you recognize the features, but realize that something new and unique has happened.

It can be a riotous reworking of an Alfred Newman antique, “Moon of Manakoora,” in which the band seems to be moving in six directions at once, yet somehow miraculously converging.

Or it may be a deeply lyrical piece such as Jimmy Rowles’ “The Peacocks,” with voicings even Duke Ellington never got around to using, such as flutes and soprano sax backing a bass clarinet (played movingly by Bob Efford).

A strain of humor runs through many Holman pieces, most notably in the first several choruses of “Just Friends,” played in unison by the entire brass and sax sections before everyone bursts out into full-flower harmony.

Billy Strayhorn’s “Rain Check” is another wild transmogrification, packed with harmonic complexities in addition to serving as a showcase for Rich Eames at the piano, Bob Cooper on tenor sax and the clarion trumpet of Bob Summers, who gets more of a chance to display his talent here than he ever did in the Count Basie band.

All these works were given the flawless reading they required; this is not easy music, but most of Holman’s sidemen are mature artists who understand and obviously relish the chance to play these exacting arrangements. It is a supreme irony of the music business that this band remains virtually unrecorded while semi-literate pop groups clog the charts; for men like these, the reward must be in the playing, and Monday night they were rich rewards indeed.