Floating to Smooth Jazz and Beyond, With Keiko Matsui

Keiko Matsui does not exactly play the kind of music one ordinarily expects to hear at Catalina Bar & Grill. The Japanese-born keyboardist’s carefully crafted recordings have been Top 10 performers on the smooth jazz charts for a decade--strikingly different from the mainstream jazz sounds that are staple items on the Catalina music menu.

Tuesday, in the opening set of a six-night run, it was clear--even before the band came on stage--that something unusual was about to take place. Smoke machines and carefully positioned and programmed lighting are not elements that accompany most performances in the room. When Matsui’s five-piece band kicked off its first tune, however, the drifting clouds of smoke and the colorful array of lights seemed perfectly appropriate for the music that was played.

Many of the tunes unfolded in a similar format: a brief, atmospheric opening featuring floating sounds from Matsui’s keyboards, immediately followed by aggressive funk rhythms driven at a high-decibel level by the drumming of Jonathan Dresel. Periodic coloration was provided by the saxophone work of Greg Riley, the guitar of Jinshi Ozaki and, in a few tunes, when Matsui’s husband, Kazu Matsui, added his shakuhachi flute playing to the mix.

Matsui, a small, slender woman, spent most of the set behind her two keyboards, leaving her position on a pair of numbers to perform with a portable keyboard hung like a guitar over her shoulder. Her playing, for the most part, was precise and accurate, executed with an articulation that owed more to her classical training than to an innate understanding, or feeling, for the swing of jazz rhythms.

On two pieces--”The Light Above the Trees” (one of her first recorded works) and “Foot Steps”--Matsui’s music reached beyond the predictable smooth jazz sounds into more intriguing possibilities. The former, for example, was touched with Japanese influences, and the latter simmered with some edgy improvisational qualities, especially via the soloing of bassist Chris Colangelo.

More often, however, the attractively pastel qualities present in some of Matsui’s pieces were blotted out by Dresel’s insistent bashing, both his intensity and his decibel level far too overheated for the music and the room. The smooth aspects of the jazz, in other words, had their appealing moments; the ear-shattering elements belonged in a different venue.

BE THERE

The Keiko Matsui Band at Catalina Bar & Grill through Sunday. 1640 N. Cahuenga Blvd., (323) 466-2210. $26 cover tonight at 8:30 and 10:30; $32 cover Friday, Saturday at 8:30 p.m. and Sunday at 7 p.m.; $28 cover Friday, Saturday at 10:30 p.m. and Sunday at 9 p.m. Two-drink minimum.