Watanabe’s Explorations on Display

Sadao Watanabe has been the jazz voice of Japan for five decades--the country’s Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and John Coltrane wrapped up in one versatile saxophone style. On Saturday night at the Japan America Theatre, he celebrated that long, impressive tenure with a program embracing the full range of his distinctive career.

Watanabe arrived in Los Angeles after an eight-city tour of Japan. After playing that many dates together, it wasn’t surprising that his two groups--an assemblage of California-based, American all-stars--had become thoroughly integrated musically, interacting with each other with the sort of easygoing intimacy more typical of groups with long histories together.

The first half of the evening was dedicated to Watanabe’s earliest works--the tunes he composed in the ‘50s and ‘60s, when he was, by his own description, a committed bebopper. His accompaniment consisted of the fine rhythm section trio of Alan Pasqua, piano, Dave Carpenter, bass, and Peter Erskine, drums. Interestingly, however, most of the pieces were surprisingly lyrical in nature, connected to bop primarily by the presence of lush, extended harmonies.

Watanabe’s solos, rendered with a clear, focused sound wrapped around briskly rhythmic phrasing, revealed traces of influence from Jackie McLean as well as Phil Woods.

But it was Pasqua’s arching lines, delivered with his characteristically compelling improvisational imagination, that most strongly linked the tunes to the bebop era. Until the final number of the set, that is, when Watanabe unexpectedly launched into Parker’s classic “Moose the Mooche,” driving through a set of up-tempo choruses definitively affirming the bop foundations of his playing.

The second part of the program took a far different tack, touring the diverse musical styles explored by Watanabe during the ‘70s, when he moved away from bop to latch on to each new jazz variation as it came down the pike. For this considerably less acoustic segment, he was accompanied again by Pasqua, playing piano as well as synthesizers, Erskine, again on drums, with the additional participation of guitarist Robben Ford, electric bassist Abe Laboriel and percussionist Steve Thornton.

The most interesting aspect of the set was Watanabe’s capacity to grasp the essence of a far-reaching collection of styles and genres, positioning them around his alto and sopranino saxophones. Over the course of a lengthy group of tunes, snatches of samba, reggae, calypso, bossa nova, rock and R&B; surfaced at one time or another. The origins of some of the tunes were obvious--a calypso resonating with the flow of Sonny Rollins’ “St. Thomas,” a bossa nova with a melody floating above moving harmonies a la “Insensitive.”

Despite the fact that some material had a kind of recycled quality, members of Watanabe’s ensemble poured life and vitality into it all, superbly supporting his saxophone solos and adding some stirring offerings of their own. Among the highlights: bassist Laboriel’s hip-swinging, string-snapping duet with percussionist Thornton; Ford’s masterful ability to blend rock, blues and jazz into a single solo; Pasqua’s splendid versatility on each of his keyboards; and the subtle but powerful rhythmic engine of Erskine’s drumming.

So give Watanabe credit not just for his 50 years of personal accomplishments, but also for his capacity to find precisely the right players to bring his music to life.