Well-Crafted, Probing Program by Childs

Flash can be just as stimulating--and just as distracting--in jazz as it can in pop music. More often than not, a player who arouses an audience with virtuosic trickery and dramatic presentation is the one who receives the most attention.

Which can make matters difficult for a musician such as pianist-composer Billy Childs, whose performance ethic has a lot more to do with intelligence and musicality than it does with flashy display. But it doesn’t deter him from his steady progress toward emerging as one of the most consistently intriguing--if less well-known--jazz pianists and composers of the ‘90s.

Tuesday night, in the opening performance of a five-day run at the Jazz Bakery, Childs brought his personal brand of probing thoughtfulness to a well-crafted, carefully balanced program of standards and originals. And they proved that musical intelligence doesn’t have to lack excitement.

Among the many things that made the music compelling was the fact that each number was viewed from a novel perspective. “Lover Man,” a tune that has practically been fixed in stone for jazz fans via interpretations by, among others, Billie Holiday and Charlie Parker, suddenly came alive again via a Childs arrangement that tossed the rhythm back and forth between meters based on six and four. The theme from the film “Chinatown” was an unusual choice, but a good one, reflecting Child’s acknowledged fascination with television and movie music. And here, again, it was framed in an appropriately dark and turbulent setting built above Childs’ rhapsodic piano work.

The film association continued with his own atmospheric original, “The Hunted,” inspired by the classic television series “The Fugitive,” which dipped into texturally rich avant-gardism in its closing passages. Thelonious Monk’s “Pannonica” gave Childs a chance to demonstrate his prowess as a solo pianist, and a closing “Alone Together,” shifted the familiar ballad into an up-tempo burner.

Childs was aided enormously by the presence of the ever-fascinating trumpeter Terence Blanchard. At 34, Blanchard still has the cherubic look of a teenager, but his playing is the product of a gifted, mature artist. His soaring high-note tour through “Chinatown” stretched and reshaped the contours of Jerry Goldsmith’s moody line, and his fiery choruses on “The Hunted” and “Alone Together” brought blazing bursts of heat to Childs’ animated settings.

Bob Hurst on bass was, as always, solid and dependable. And drummer Willie Jones III was a turbo-charged rhythm-maker, topping off the set with a surging set of choruses on the final “Alone Together.”

* The Billy Childs Trio with Terence Blanchard at the Jazz Bakery through Sunday, 3233 Helms Ave., (310) 271-9039.