Billy Taylor And Friends In Fine Form

NEA Jazz Master Billy Taylor interrupted his retirement from public performance at the Kennedy Center's KC Jazz Club on Friday night with a cozy concert that featured two of the things he loves most: playing tribute to some of the great artists he's known over the years, and showcasing budding jazz talent.

Though Taylor, 85, briefly alluded to the minor stroke he suffered in 2001 that affected his right hand, he was in fine form on the piano, collaborating with bassist Chip Jackson and drummer Winard Harper. A good thing, too, since the trio has always favored a demanding level of interplay, laced with rhythmic fits and starts. The program included salutes to bassist Oscar Pettiford (single-handedly evoked by Taylor's southpaw at one point) and Afro-Cuban jazz legend Machito, whose influence was felt during the trio's splashing and vamping arrangement of "Morning." A strong spiritual current also ran through the performance, thanks to Taylor's gospel-charged "I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free" and his elegiac ballad "In Loving Memory." Alert and inventive, Jackson and Harper enlivened several arrangements with delightfully colorful solos.

Later Taylor introduced a protege, 17-year-old pianist Christian Sands. Besides being preternaturally gifted, as a rendering of Herbie Hancock's "Maiden Voyage" swiftly demonstrated, Sands is even now capable of playing with veterans such as Jackson and Harper with quick-witted assurance. The concert ended with a fanciful baroque-to-bop trio arrangement of "All the Things You Are," a bright, Taylor-made send-off indeed.

-- Mike Joyce