Imagine how Mozart would swing

It’s always been an intriguing fantasy to imagine Mozart -- via some sort of time warp -- arriving at a 20th century jam session. The 18th century’s masterful improviser and musical genius trading riffs with the likes of Charlie Parker, John Coltrane and Thelonious Monk -- how cool would that be?

Something like that fantasy may have been present in pianist Uri Caine’s mind when he recorded his latest album, “Plays Mozart,” which was the foundation for his performance Friday in the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra’s Musaic festival at the Jazz Bakery. It’s not the first time Caine has blended the music of a classical composer with his jazz sensibilities (he channeled Mahler a night earlier). But doing so with the music of Mozart -- largely because of the engaging qualities of his melodies -- would appear to present fascinating possibilities for the combination of musical substance and style.

The first selection was encouraging. Playing solo, Caine started with the gentle, almost child-like opening phrase of the Sonata in C (K. 545). A moment later, he switched emphasis, transforming the rising and falling scalular passages into hard-driving, bebop articulation. Other passages circled over stride rhythms, contrasted with the occasional bombast of two-handed chording. It was the most convincing work on the program.

The balance of the music was performed by Caine with a five-piece ensemble -- violinist Josefina Vergara, clarinetist Moran Katz, trumpeter Ralph Alessi, bassist Michael Formanek and drummer Jim Black. Caine’s scoring tended to juxtapose quirky ensemble passages (in styles ranging from circus band and klezmer units to hotel-lobby light classical) with individual solos (mostly from Alessi, Formanek and Black) and all-join-in group improvising.

Some of it worked, some didn’t.

The clownish rendering of the sforzandos interrupting the melody in the second movement of the “Jupiter” Symphony (No. 41), for example, pushed satire to the point of silliness. But the atmospheric take on the Rondo Alla Turca (with a recorded Arabic chant added for emphasis) produced entertaining results. Other Caine-Mozart encounters -- the fourth movement of the Clarinet Quintet, the third movement of the Sinfonia Concertante -- were at their best when they risked positioning the familiar melodies within dangerously eclectic musical settings.

Ultimately, one couldn’t help but be aware of the missing element in this cross-century coming together -- Mozart himself -- and wonder how his fertile, spontaneous musical mind would have responded to the improvisational possibilities coming to life from within his original works.