OK kids, it's playtime.

Yes, in one sense, it's always "playtime" when musicians get down to business. After all, we say they're "playing music": and even at its most serious, a song or symphony should have the light, lithe quality that lifts play above work. But when Mike Jones seats himself at a piano-- whether to open the long-running Vegas show for Penn and Teller, or to regale an audience one-tenth that size at Chicago's most popular jazz club -- it turns into a friendly game of ping-pong, a championship chess match, and a rollicking recess romp, all rolled into one.

For that matter, you could as well be watching Ryne Sandberg turn the double-play at second; or Peter O'Toole dashing through one of his later, more lighthearted roles; or Houdini making some improbable escape. Why? Because virtuosi have more in common with each other than they do with lesser players at their own games. they make it look easy. Mike Jones makes it sound impossibly easy, even when he's challenging Art Tatum and Oscar Peterson and Martial Solal and Chick Corea for sheer speed, grace, and power; as hard and as fast as Jones sprints around the keyboard, he still seems to be having more fun than anyone else in the room.

In truth, he's a pretty funny guy-- whether he's shouting a change of key to the drummer, (the drummer?), or tossing together oddly linked tunes you had never considered in the same breath, or setting a ballad medley to a speeding-locomotive of stride rhythm. He knows a lot of jokes, and if you spend a half-hour with him, you'll hear a dozen. (But he also knows enough about the history of his repertoire to have some fun when he talks to the audience.) And then there's the constant stream of rhythmic invention and punning musical allusions that course through any Mike Jones performance; the jazz equivilent of cracking wise, on a regular and spectacular basis. (My favorite remains the time h marked the mid-set departure of a rather loopy listener by somehow working th eopening riff of "The Twighlight Zone" theme into his solo.)

Such gamemanship drives any Mike Jones performance, but especially a live set. For instance, in the third chorus of his solo on "Robbins Nest", the classic early bob line written by the classy pianist Sir Charles Thompson, Jones interpolates the melody from Clifford Brown's composition, "Sandu" (2:50 into the track); it fits like a glove. It fits just as well when it makes a brief return on the tour de force "Exactly Like You", (5:45). Before that, Jones has already launched a one-two punch , quickly quoting the instrumental introduction to "Singin' in the Rain", (at 1:38) and the Sammy Davis hit "Candy Man" (1:43), after the "Sandu" quote come snippets of "Cocktails for Two" (5:52) and "I Can't Believe That You're in Love With Me", (6:00). And in between, you'll hear some of the most lucid and spirited virtuousity you'd ever imagined.

I mention all this because it happens, to varying degrees, throughout Jones's music, and because it lets you in on the method behind his happy madness. But even when the music lends itself to such analysis, it has to rise above this kind of dissection to succeed. And Jones does that exactly: he fills your sense whether or not pin down the machinery that allows him to construct his towering improvisational persona. Even if you know none of the references I've pointed out -- even if you can't see the digital counter on your CD player to find them -- Jones still flies at you like a big, bear-hugging uncle, inviting and overwhelming at the same time.

On past discs, he's always done this solo, playing unaccompanied for much the same reason Tatum usually played alone{ already an "orchestra" on his own, he didn't really need the traditional trio accompanists on bass and drums. And anyway, one wondered: what could they do that wouldn't just get in the way? The Chicagoans Kelly Sill and Tim Davis have found multiple answers on these performances. Jones still playslots of his own bass lines, but bassisst Sill -- a Chicago legend for his clean melodies and massive tone -- bolsters them without clashing. And Davis, a master of swinging hard without intruding, colors the pianist's solos while stoking his considerable rhythmic propulsion.

In many respects, of course, Jones the trio leader sounds a lot like Jones the solo pianist. He still revels in that knuckle-busting, jaw-dropping, right-hand flexibility, and those giants chords, and the almost scary independence of his left hand, which in his uncaccompanied work serves as bass, drums, and occasionally, the drone of bagpipe. But the extra dimensionality of the trio setting allows for more. Here he can unleash long pasages of locked-hand improvising that bounce along the waves of the rhythm section, (unaccompanied, such breaks would interrupt the flow). Here he gets to dust the keys with subtle, sotto voce asides to the exquisite bass solos, revealing a subtlety some listeners might have previously missed. And with his bandmates picking up some of the duties usually performed by his left hand, Jones can slip away from the expectancies of his evergreen material to engage his more modernistic musical leanings. This trio only exists once a year-- during Jones's annual visit to the Green Mill -- bu together it bobs and weeaves, springs and soars, jostles and giggles through the entirely serious business of artistic creation.

 

Or as another vitruoso explained it, "The play's the thing".