JAZZ REVIEW : Hamilton Sticks With Standards

Scott Hamilton, whose three day run at Alfonse’s ends tonight, has become a symbol of the jazz world’s youthful traditionalists.

Despite exposure to (and respect for) all the vicissitudes of the tenor saxophone during the post-swing era, Hamilton continues to convey through his horn the warmly impassioned values one associates with the trend-setters of the 1930s and ‘40s.

He growls not, neither does he honk or squeal. All one expects from him is the natural sound of this inherently beautiful instrument, brought to bear on some of the great standard songs. Very rarely does he play a tune that was composed after he was born. That was his modus operandi when he began his professional career in Providence, R.I.; today, at 34, now an international star, he remains happily unchanged in his ways.

Whenever possible Hamilton joins with a group of his old Rhode Island associates. On this occasion, for the usual economic reasons, he is working with a local rhythm section. This seems much less restrictive when you consider that he is backed at Alfonse’s by the Gerald Wiggins Trio, with Bob Maize on bass and Jake Hanna on drums.

Wiggins is the all-purpose pianist, as rhapsodically compelling on a ballad like “Skylark” as he is rhythmically engaging in an up-tempo blues. As for Maize, a chorus by this limber performer is much more than a mere interlude between piano solo and saxophone finale; it’s an event, an important entity in itself.

Hamilton chooses mutually compatible material: “I Hear a Rhapsody,” “Candy,” “But Beautiful.” Without sounding derivative, he brings colorfully to life the verities established decades ago by giants like Coleman Hawkins and Ben Webster. Once described as a good wind who was blowing us no ill, he continues nobly to live up to that characterization.