This weekend’s performances by Alive and Well were presented by JazzEast at a new space called 1313, established by former JazzEast director Susan Hunter. Formerly known as the Deli Green Market on Hollis Street near Morris, 1313 has been effectively transformed into an attractive arts presentation venue. The room had a pleasant ambience which was greatly enhanced by the quiet, attentive audience. (According to Donnie Palmer, an attentive audience is a luxury seldom enjoyed by performers at the sole remaining jazz club up in Toronto these days.)

With respect to audiences, it’s worthwhile to note the social position most frequently occupied by jazz music these days: mostly, it’s background music in restaurants or synth-based “lite grooves” to create aural ambience in low-lit hipster nightclubs. However, the jazz played by Alive and Well is authentic jazz — the real deal — and it requires an attentive audience (which it received).

The entire night’s music was totally improvised; nothing about the programme was planned beforehand. Audiences were given over to an immersive sense of immediacy; they heard music which staunchly anchored them in the present moment. Those who listened and watched carefully were rewarded on many levels throughout the evening.

The particular musical qualities of each artist are worth trying to define, at least in part. Donnie Palmer played with a lush, gorgeous alto sound, and he rendered all of his lines with incredibly tasteful phrasing and a truly profound melodic sensibility. One was mindful that they were hearing a truly seasoned professional at the height of his career. As a jazz saxophonist myself, I was quite inspired by Palmer’s performance.

Skip Beckwith provided a great low end to the group. His sound on the bass was rich and full-bodied, and he possessed a clear, resonant attack. And while he had no trouble playing strictly in time and within the chord changes, Beckwith also demonstrated a remarkable deftness at slipping in and out of the time and the key — and then “nailing the one” at the top of the next chorus seemingly as if by magic. He also displayed fantastic listening and improvisational skills; his solos were not ones over which the audience conversed with one another.

With respect to the drums, Donnie Palmer likes to say that it takes a hell of a good drummer to be better than no drummer at all. Jerry Granelli fits the bill as a hell of a good drummer. He’s no ordinary jazz drummer, though. It would be more accurate to describe Jerry Granelli as an artist who uses drumsticks instead of paintbrushes.

To be sure, Granelli plays his drum kit like a melodic musical instrument. It is not uncommon to hear actual melodies issue forth from his drums and cymbals when he plays. Furthermore, he doesn’t so much “mark the time” on the drums as he plays tasteful, rhythmic phrases that perfectly complement whatever the other musicians are playing at that moment. He does this with an apparently effortless but intense focus and concentration; he really appears to hear everything that’s happening in every moment of each tune. And if this weren’t enough, Granelli separates himself further from the ordinary drummer by showing incredible restraint in deciding whether or not to respond to whatever he’s hearing at the time. Drummers — with all due respect, percussionistes — are not unknown to be an egotistical and loud-playing lot, and they rarely tend towards this level of engaged listening and interaction in a group.

Later that same week, 1313 opened its doors to celebrate Donnie Palmer’s 70s birthday. Alive and Well played one last short set before staff brought out several homemade cakes containing a combined total of 70 candles. Not long afterwards, I stood with Donnie Palmer offstage when Jerry Granelli and Skip Beckwith were leaving the venue to go home for the night. Donnie teased each of them for leaving early, but I heard their voices crack with emotion when saying good-bye to each other. Since Donnie lives in Toronto now, it’s hard to say when exactly this group will perform together again. After the others left, Donnie looked at me and shook his head with a sad smile. “Oh, we’re just a bunch of old farts,” he said with his typically bowed head but with tears in his eyes. After that, he put his horn away for the night and hung out with the audience and other musicians in the room before returning to Toronto.

Multi-instrumentalist Arturo Sandoval is Cuba’s most famous jazz émigré. Born in a small village in Havana Province in 1949, he took up the trumpet as a child and earned a place in Cuba’s all-star national band by the age of 16. His first major ensemble was the seminal Latin jazz group Irakere, which he co-founded with Chucho Valdes and Paquito D’Rivera. Sandoval is also well-known for his lifelong association with bebop legend Dizzy Gillespie, whom he considered his main musical idol and mentor. While on stage at this Halifax performance, he also named two major Canadian influences on his music: trumpeter Maynard Ferguson and pianist Oscar Peterson. By the end of the night, those influences were made clear through Sandoval’s astounding performance.

Sandoval performed with a 5-piece backup band comprised of a pianist, a bassist, a percussionist, a drummer, and a saxophonist who also played the EWI, a breath-controlled synthesizer in the shape of a soprano sax. Aside from Sandoval himself, the strongest musicians in the group were surely the bassist and the pianist, who were constantly in lock-step and who created a more solid foundation than even the traditional bass and drums. The pianist was totally fluent in the language of Latin music, turning in flawless montunos on the piano and also adding sublime colours and textures with his unique vintage synth patches from the 70s and 80s. The bassist called to mind at times the funky finger-picking style of Tower of Power bassist Francis Rocco Prestia, and at other times the virtuosic soloing style of John Patitucci. Like Patitucci, he was equally at home playing the 6-string electric bass or the traditional acoustic upright bass.

Arturo Sandoval has a captivating presence on stage. He’s extremely charismatic, self-deprecating, and funny. In numerous interviews he has stated that his chief objective is to entertain, and yet he didn’t at all pander to the lowest common denominator in the audience. He’s a very serious player with truly astounding technique on trumpet, percussion, piano, and vocals. Indeed, he’s so proficient at all of these instruments that one wonders if he has a second brain stored somewhere. It’s remarkable to hear a single musician perform with such prowess on so many instruments in a single set, let alone a single song.

His range on the trumpet is astonishing. Like Dizzy, he can play far into the stratosphere, squeezing out notes that are nearly audible only by dogs; he could even do this with the restrictive Harmon mute placed in the bell of his trumpet. However, he can also play lower than any trumpeter I’ve ever heard: during one of his solos, he transcended the ordinary limitations of the instrument by progressing well into the range of a bass trombone.

During another selection, he treated the audience to a scat solo on vocals which included a perfect and hilarious imitation of an acoustic bass, both plucked and with a bow. That same scat solo included the fastest triple- and quadruple-tongueing I’ve ever heard — it sounded like his tongue was simply fluttering between his teeth.

He turned serious after that tune by sitting down at the piano and playing a standard swinger with a simple quartet and no percussion. This was perhaps the most awe-inspiring selection of the evening: if you didn’t know that Sandoval was a trumpet player originally, you could easily mistake the piano for his main instrument. His total command over the keyboard was that profound.

Not being a big fan of Latin jazz personally, I have to admit that I was apprehensive about what kind of show I was about to see. I worried that we would be subjected to a blistering array of fast and high trumpet playing that would be full of chops but bereft of nuance; a show that would entertain the masses but leave the discerning jazz listener cold. I’m pleased to report that he dashed most of those worries within the first chorus of the first tune, however. He now occupies a much more exalted status in my own repertoire of jazz musicians than he did before I heard him play live. It was an absolute pleasure to attend this show.

This year, Saskatchewan-born pianist Jon Ballantyne won his second Juno award. His first Juno was awarded in 1989 for his album Skydance, featuring saxophonist Joe Henderson. This year, he won the Juno for Best Traditional Jazz Album for his 2006 CD Avenue Standard, a recording of jazz standards with a fresh, original approach. At this year’s Atlantic Jazz Festival, he presented the audience with selections from that recording as well as several original compositions from his penultimate album, Ever Since Now. All of his recordings, including the quartet album he made with saxophonist Dewey Redman, are available at CDBaby.com or through his website at JonBallantyne.com.

Ballantyne’s set began with the famed Sam Rivers composition Beatrice. It was a lush, expressive rendering and a fitting tribute to the late Joe Henderson, with whom Ballantyne performed on numerous occasions throughout 1989 and 1990. Ballantyne’s rendition of Joe Henderson’s most often-performed song featured tightly-voiced chords with thick, rich harmonies.

Ever Since Now is an original composition. After the initial statement of the melody and harmony of the tune, Ballantyne improvised a delightful deconstruction and reconstruction of the song. He began with inventive hand-striking of the piano’s strings, followed by a growling, low-end stride piano version, replete with sophisticated polyrhythmic figures that brought to mind images of rushing, swirling water. Seldom is an audience treated to such a thorough exploration of a tune’s theme and its various submotifs.

The original composition Gates was inspired by artist Christo’s unique 2005 installation of 7,500 saffron-coloured fabric-paneled gateways throughout New York’s Central Park. Ballantyne’s playing immediately brought to mind clear visual images; his phrasing actually made me think of the long, flowing cloths of Christo’s installation. The soaring, improvised melodic lines were artfully conceived and impeccably executed. And like all top artists, his concentration and focus were palpable; it felt as though he was channeling the music from some deeper source.

It was also a pleasure to hear the Thelonious Monk tune Bemsha Swing. Many pianists have trouble interpreting Monk without copying Monk’s personal playing style, but Ballantyne didn’t have this problem. He successfully turned in an original rendition that still paid tribute to Monk through its profound basis in the blues (and goodness, can Ballantyne PLAY the blues), underlaid by an intense, hard-driving swing. And then, a most unexpected bridge: vast, soaring lines (watch out, Oscar Peterson) played over an intense, grinding ostenato in the bass. And it swung so hard — Ballantyne threw down tremendous eighth-note lines that went everywhere — they were unrelenting, full of pressure and release, and interspersed with fantastic flourishes and thickly-voiced comping. I felt exhilarated by the end of the tune.

I first met and heard Jon Ballantyne while studying jazz at McGill in 1992. He had recently recorded with my sax teacher at the time, Newfoundland’s John Nugent, and he sat in on a lesson with me. At the time, my ears weren’t developed enough to appreciate all the nuances in Ballantyne’s playing, but I was thrilled to hear him play at this year’s festival. He turned in a tremendous performance befitting the recipient of Canada’s top jazz honours for 2007.