JAZZ REVIEW:Live: The SFJazz Collective

The combo's performance fails to take off, but the solo efforts are articulate and inventive.

By Don Heckman, Special to The Times

Assembling a group of individualistic jazz players, each with a career of his or her own, can have both up and down sides. As was the case Friday with the SFJazz Collective at UCLA's Royce Hall.

Created in 2004 by the San Francisco Jazz Festival as an all-star aggregation capable of moving easily from Golden Age jazz to cutting-edge contemporary sounds, the Collective's varying lineup has examined the music of Herbie Hancock, Ornette Coleman and others, while also showcasing the composition and arranging skills of the group's members. The same applied in Friday's concert, which featured the music of Wayne Shorter as the classic element, plus original pieces by most of the current members of the eight-piece ensemble.

Four horns, vibraphone and rhythm can provide a richly hued palette of sounds, and the arrangements reached from the lush, Gil Evans-like timbres favored by pianist Renee Rosnes to the edgy dissonances of trumpeter Dave Douglas and trombonist Robin Eubanks. And originals by Eubanks ("Breakthrough") and bassist Matt Penman ("The Angel's Share") used off-center rhythmic accents and layered tonal densities in strikingly contemporary fashion.

Despite the variety of arranging techniques and the colorful harmonic textures, the ensemble often lacked the thrust and symbiotic swing of groups that work together regularly. The members of the Collective -- also including saxophonists Joe Lovano and Miguel Zenon, vibraphonist Stefon Harris and drummer Eric Harland -- are world class. But effectively blending their unique attributes into a let's-all-swing-together musical total would take more time than the Collective's relatively short performance schedule allows.

The solo efforts were entirely different. With ample open space allotted to each player, inventive attributes were on full display: Rosnes' and Harris' capacity to blend lyricism with fleet inventiveness, Douglas' constant musical probing, Lovano's warmth and Zenon's passion, Eubanks' rapid-fire articulateness, the sturdy support of Penman's bass and Harland's ever-shifting percussive sounds.