Dave Holland Quartet

By PHIL GALLO

Dave Holland Quartet (Jazz Bakery; 195 seats; $ 20 top) Presented inhouse. Band: Dave Holland, Eric Person, Steve Nelson, Gene Jackson. Opened and reviewed Feb. 18, 1997; closes Feb. 22. There were subtle but telling moments in the Dave Holland Quartet's 90-minute opening night set to suggest how cognitively this band communicates, in passages both dense and airy. At one point, a Latin bombast dropped into the swirling, free jazz drumming of Gene Jackson and a Coltrane-ish stream of ideas from soprano saxist Eric Person as Holland held his bass and watched with fatherly pride. As simple as that moment was, it reflected Holland's ambitious goal of presenting a steady working band that can execute as soloists and in ensemble with improvisational edginess and studied precision. Once again, goal achieved. The coherency of this program benefited from Holland's compositional strengths. Holland and troupe book-ended the set with songs from "Dreams of Elders" (ECM), one of last year's finest recordings, choosing to emphasize new material that's softer around the edges than much of his work as a leader over the last 20 years. In "Mr. B," a tribute to bassist Ray Brown, he went for Big Gulp-sized chords and riffs, soloing with a jagged flair that skipped and teetered around the melody the way Brown did anchoring sessions with Oscar Peterson and Phineas Newborn Jr. Holland's band, together for more than three years now, is expert as usual. Vibraphonist Steve Nelson, one of the top three on his instrument, leaned a bit heavily on resonating, four-mallet chords in the new works but showed exceptional breadth of knowledge in the perf of Charles Mingus' ballad "Fast as Lee Ann." Person's sax playing is consistently stately and assured; Jackson supplies a hailstorm of activity from behind the drums, moving from frantic to stuttered rimshots on the rambunctious final cut, "Second Thoughts." --- Phil Gallo