JAZZ REVIEW : Bud Shank Quartet at the Loa

Bud Shank, the alto saxophonist and composer who opened Thursday at the Loa, was taken too much for granted during his many years as a Southland resident. As a visitor from his home in Port Townsend, Wash., he seems doubly welcome, particularly since his present direction is more adventurous than that of his days in a somewhat bland group known as the L.A. Four.

He opened with an original, “The Doctor Is In,” a fast blues with a bridge. It was promptly apparent that this is a no-holds-barred quartet. In the next piece, his own “Sea Flowers,” it was fascinating to observe Shank’s innate sensitivity: He has an uncanny ability to bring the right tone quality, dynamics, duration and emotional impact to every note and phrase.

This impact was fortified by the presence of three propulsive teammates--pianist Alan Broadbent, a promising drummer from New Orleans named Gordon Lane and the remarkable John Leitham on bass. However, in “Softly as in a Morning Sunrise” (a tune no jazzman has ever played softly), he cruised jauntily through the first three choruses accompanied only by Leitham.

Broadbent’s keen ear for harmony was engagingly evident during Johnny Mandel’s “A Time for Love,” in which Shank embroidered this attractive standard tune with his personalized finesse. The set ended with another new Shank work from a forthcoming album, the Brazilianesque “Tomorrow’s Rainbow.”

Shank bears roughly the same relationship to Art Pepper as Frank Morgan does to Charlie Parker, yet even this analogy is a little unfair, since at this point in Shank’s career he is unquestionably his own man. It could only be regretted that he did not choose to bring out the flute, an instrument he was among the first jazz artists to master.