Jazz Reviews : Mays, Wofford Take Improv Route in Culver City

Piano duets are a problem. They either call for careful preparation or total spontaneity, with an intuitive input of mutual inspiration. As Mike Wofford and Bill Mays proved Wednesday at the Bakery in Culver City, the improvised route, in the right hands, can produce miraculous results.

Wofford, who lives in San Diego, and Mays, a visiting New Yorker, had never performed as a team. Aside from a few scraps of music, they had nothing to work with but their own fertile imaginations. It was evident from the first tune, “Monk’s Dream,” that this was going to be a memorable evening.

Mays, bobbing and weaving, his face going through odd contortions, played much the way he looked, with cascading runs, insistent trills and an uncanny ability to feed on whatever issued from the mind and hands of Wofford, who was relatively immobile but no less creative.

The program ranged from Coltrane to Gillespie to originals (they even sight-read each other’s compositions). An ingenious ploy was the contrapuntal use of two blues themes by Charlie Parker, with Mays playing “Relaxin’ at Camarillo” against Wofford’s version of “Cheryl.”

Two solo interludes found Mays reaching back for a very early and delightful Duke Ellington piano piece, the 1928 “Black Beauty.” Wofford’s solo selection was also a chestnut, the 1922 “Rose of the Rio Grande,” which he tied into rhythmic knots.

The second set included a medley of “Stars Fell on Alabama,” “Stairway to the Stars” and other celestial standards. For a finale, two celebrated members of the audience, Gerald Wiggins and Mike Lang, were added to the cast for a round of pianistic mixed doubles on “Cotton Tail.”