(Brick’s Picks, LA Weekly, 2010)

So maybe your idea of a good time ain’t hanging around a church on a Saturday night. Maybe church is something better left to someone else’s wedding or someone else’s funeral. But jazz has a way of popping up in churches, good jazz, even great jazz.  Like pianist Patrice Rushen this Saturday night at the Holy Nativity Episcopal Church in Westchester. You get Ms. Rushen’s splendid piano chops, the brilliant reedman Bennie Maupin, superb bassist Darek Oles and drummer Ralph Penland, who swings like mad and has a very personal way of framing that beat that we just love. Many years ago, in fact, we tried explaining what we dug about his playing, something about how he gets into the basic meter of the music and works out his ideas there…and (we said) his solos are variations on the framework he is laying down, as if he is trying to draw the most perfect square imaginable, how the patterns build a perfect latticework for the other soloists to build on…. Not exactly sure what that means now, but Ralph Penland sure lays down some solid syncopation, and the soloists really do fly over the thing. Maupin definitely will, on sax, flute, and bass clarinet. You’ve heard him on Bitches Brew and a dozen Herbie Hancock sessions, and you ought to know his own subtle, grow-on-you releases Penumbra and Early Reflections, both on Cryptogramophone (a label you should also know about).  Rushen herself is playing so beautifully but recording little lately, hopefully something is coming. But we’ve been going on way too long about this gig, so just remember it’s at the Holy Nativity Episcopal Church (6700 West 83rd Street, Westchester) on Saturday, at 6:30. It’s $30, but the price includes a “fabulous New Orleans-style dinner” and a drink, even. The money is to help keep this excellent jazz series running, god bless ‘em (well, obviously, it’s a church.)