If you know that group, you probably know its brilliant, springy work on “Turn Out the Stars,” a six-CD boxed set recorded at the Village Vanguard in 1980 — a few months before Evans died, at 51 — and eventually released (on Nonesuch, in 1996) to breathless critical acclaim. And if you know those recordings, you might have had a hard time pushing them to the back of your mind during a performance this week.
But Mr. Pieranunzi, 63, is savvy enough to work with that knowledge, bending it to his purposes. He didn’t overstuff his first set on Wednesday night with songs from the Evans repertory, but neither did he try to obscure that pianist’s influence. His opening tune, “Autumn Song,” was an original with a strong whiff of the Evans style — those feathery harmonies, that nifty rhythmic modulation — and right away Mr. Johnson and Mr. La Barbera sounded almost exactly as they did in the same room more than 30 years ago.
This yielded a mildly disorienting sensation that persisted through the second tune, a coolly Evanescent waltz called “The Mood Is Good.” But what followed — “Ornettement,” for Ornette Coleman — handily broke the spell. Mr. Pieranunzi adopted a flintier, more percussive attack, and his partners edged into tougher and more irresolute territory, swinging intrepidly for a while before settling into a pop-gospel backbeat groove.
Mr. Johnson and Mr. La Barbera are still effortlessly effective as a rhythm team, and each delivered smart and punchy solo commentary. Mr. Johnson was the trio’s most consistently engaging improviser, bounding across the full register of his instrument; he was also its linchpin, the person with whom both of the other players have ample history.
Gradually the set took on its own character; by the time it arrived at a Nino Rota-esque original called “Fellini’s Waltz,” there was no doubting that Mr. Pieranunzi was in control.
Which may have been all the assurance he needed to tip his hat: first with a spare but sumptuous interpretation of “These Foolish Things,” and finally, during the encore, with “Solar,” one of the jazz standards Evans explored often in his final years. It was tackled here with emphatic license, even if it ultimately felt like an offering.
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