Jazz trio gives Sheraton crowd epic show

MONTY ALEXANDER, JOHN CLAYTON and JEFF HAMILTON, Sheraton City Centre, April 6

There is no doubt that in a year of remarkable jazz performers, there hasn't been a show greeted as enthusiastically as Monday night's trio. Each of the performers would be a worthy headliner and John Clayton and Jeff Hamilton have both visited Salt Lake this season with their own groups, but the reunion of those two with pianist Monty Alexander was an event of musical magnificence.

Alexander directs the traffic, but the trio, who first met, played and recorded in the early 1970s, have an obvious rapport on stage. They perform cohesively, they communicate well with a glance or a nod, and they sure can play.

The ballroom was an absolutely sold-out affair, including extra chairs on the sides of the raised platform-stage, with a few standing in the back. And from the moment the three men walked on stage, the audience was in a rapture. They zipped through the first 45-minute set without a break and without saying anything into a microphone. Dressed in formal suits and ties in the roasting-hot ballroom, and as physically as Alexander and especially Hamilton attack their music, they wouldn't have looked out of place in track suits.

Despite playing together only on rare occasions, the trio has a palpable trust that reminds the listener of free-spirited trapeze artists performing without a net. Alexander would even rise from his piano bench after giving a cue for Clayton or Hamilton to solo and all but dance as he watched them improvise for a few measures before getting his lightning-quick fingers back to work. They took the familiar if mundane "Candy Man," (featured in "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory," performed by Sammy Davis Jr.) and turned it into an exercise in brilliance.

The applause for the duration of the show was beyond enthusiastic, with fans not clapping but beating their hands together and raising their voices with hoots and whistles. They ended the first set with the universally familiar "Sweet Georgia Brown," but with a take that belongs distinctly to the trio.

They returned in the second set with more of the familiar but hit a high point with John Clayton's composition, "3000 Miles Ago." Clayton pulled out his bow and broke off distinctly from the feel of the rest of the night with a melancholy introduction and ending and a blues-based bass middle. Alexander did the song writer proud, pulling out the finest touches on his keyboard, wringing the emotion from the change-of-pace song.

Much of the rest of the night Clayton stood calmly with his bass and smiles like a favorite uncle might enjoy a cold drink on a hot day and in the meantime his hands walk the fret while he plays like a man possessed.

The trio ended their set with an epic rendition of "Battle Hymn of the Republic." It was a musical performance that any musician or group will be hard pressed to equal in this or any jazz series.