Jazz legend gives concert series new variety

Some creative programming and open-mindedness brought jazz legend McCoy Tyner to the Shriver Hall Concert Series this past Sunday night. The headliner of the Piano Celebration, a huge weekend event marking the 40th anniversary of the Shriver Series, Tyner was also the first jazz musician to grace the stage of SHCS. He played a robust program of standards and original compositions with a verve honed over 40 years and with some of the greatest names in jazz.

McCoy Tyner is best known as John Coltrane's accompanist and the piano player in his famous quartet, providing totally unique vamping for albums such as "My Favorite Things" and "A Love Supreme." He first met Coltrane gigging locally as a teenager in Philadelphia, where he grew up playing jazz alongside Bud Powell, Art Farmer and Benny Golson. Since his career with Coltrane, Tyner has produced a prodigious body of solo work, some highlights including the revolutionary 1967 solo album "The Real McCoy."

Tyner's performance at Shriver was slow and unextraordinary up until the interval. His playing was stale and unadventurous and gave the impression that he was not yet warmed up, still finding his fingers and orienting his ear. At the end of the show, he even muttered an apology into his stage microphone about the "condition" of the pianos onstage.

The second half, however, was breathtaking. Tyner ambled onstage a second time for a selection of standards, including Coltrane's "Lady Bird," and the bop tune "Step In," as well as the ballads "Sweet and Slow" and Coltrane's "Naima." The latter was a particular highlight, as the pianist filled the quieter moments and the sustained notes of Coltrane's classic love song with tasteful shifting triads and moving lines. The only problem with it was that it only lasted a minute or two.

Tyner's improvisations seem slightly less compact and symmetrical than those of his peers (especially than those of Art Tatum, who Tyner described in program notes as one of his biggest influences). As a result, they are easier for him to mess up. Sometimes their long, meandering phrase-building seems challenging and avant-garde, but other times he seemed to lose his train of thought in the middle of a solo.

Tyner has always been known for his distinctive chord-voicings, usually very close intervals played normally or inverted, repeated in complex rhythmic patterns to emphasize a phrase. He has not, in his old age, lost this talent and inventiveness. His classic style was all over the tunes he played, though he would sometimes lighten the mood of the headier selections with little shave-and-a-haircut style ending cadences.

A highlight was "An Authentic African Village," a highly rhythmic post-bop tune that showed Tyner's exhilarating capacity to groove on more measured compositions. His left-hand part rolled in an undulating bass line, peppered with nine-chord harmonics, while he spun an undeniably cool melody overtop. At points, both hands intertwined to play off one another and produce lavish harmonic and rhythmic textures.

Tyner's concert, though slow to get going, was very exciting, and it's almost just as exciting to see the new directions in which the Shriver Hall Concert Series is moving. If a highly artistic jazz player is good enough to share their stage with classical virtuosos like Leon Fleischer, the possibilities for future programs seem limitless.