San Francisco Jazz Collective
Birdland
Through March 30

Allan Harris
Birdland
Through March 31

Long-form works have been part of jazz almost since the beginning — Duke Ellington was experimenting with extended canvases at least as far back as the early ’30s, when it was difficult, to say the least, to capture such pieces on recordings.

The San Francisco Jazz Collective’s latest project is a fresh take on the concept of the jazz suite. Where most such works were written by a single composer — most famously, in the early days, by Ellington and Mary Lou Williams — the SFJC has developed the idea of the collective suite. 

Its latest work — no title was announced at Birdland — was inspired by the 20th anniversary of their presenting organization, SFJAZZ, and collectively composed by the seven current members of the ensemble. Each musician wrote one composition and then, as bassist Matt Brewer informed us, “we spent a lot of time in San Francisco rehearsing it and melding it into one continuous piece.” 

The result was a fascinating, 90-minute work that was played continuously. Unlike most of the signature jazz suites, like Ellington’s masterpiece “Far East Suite” and “The Kansas City Suite,” which Benny Carter composed for Count Basie and his orchestra, there were no distinct pauses between the movements. Rather, between most sections, the pianist Ed Simon played a brief transitional passage.

Overall, the work had the feeling of traveling without a roadmap or a GPS: You didn’t know what you were going to come to next. There would be ensemble passages followed by solos — none of which was ever long enough to deplete the crowd’s attention — followed by rewarding tutti sections in which everyone came back together.  

There were sections of ballads, sections of blues, and then we would come to a spot on the musical globe where we had obviously ventured into the Caribbean, because all of a sudden, tenor saxophonist David Sanchez switched to congas and everything was en clave.

As we expect in jazz ensembles, the frontliners, trumpeter Michael Rodriguez, saxophonists Chris Potter and Mr. Sanchez, and vibraphonist Warren Wolf, were the stars, and the rhythm section, with drummer Kendrick Scott in addition to Messrs. Simon and Brewer, did a marvelous job of holding everything together.

It was a challenging, rewarding work that the SFJC is undoubtedly still polishing and presumably trimming down slightly to fit on a CD; I’m looking forward to hearing it again very soon.

***

While the SFJazz Collective is upstairs at 315 W. 44th St., the singer Allan Harris is performing downstairs in the Birdland Theater, and he too is offering a unique and new idea in terms of a presentation.

As always, his show is a mixture of jazz standards, ballads, and swingers, a few soul and pop tunes, and one or two originals. This time, though, he’s introducing each song with a brief recitation, a usually iconic piece of poetry. 

With the pianist John DiMartino improvising a backdrop, the second selection, for instance, began with William Shakespeare’s 18th sonnet, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” That led into Johnny Mercer and Sonny Burke’s “Midnight Sun.” Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s famous sonnet 43, “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways” framed Ray Noble’s “The Very Thought of You.”

There was a lot of Shakespeare — Mr. Harris wisely reasoned that it would be pedantic to distinguish between the Bard’s pure poetry and sonnets and the highly poetic monologues of his plays. Thus, Marc Antony’s famous speech from “Julius Caesar” surprisingly led into Bobby Hebb’s “Sunny”; here, a funeral oration would seem a strange bedfellow for a love song, but Mr. Harris and his ensemble made them work together, both sonically and attitudinally.   

Mr. Harris also included several famous works of what jazz fans call “vocalese,” writing lyrics to an iconic solo, such as Eddie Jefferson’s take on Miles Davis’s “So What?” That was preceded by Dylan Thomas’s “Do not go gentle into that good night.” 

When that technique was developed, most famously by Jefferson and Jon Hendricks, it was viewed as a means of extending the jazz singer’s role on stage, taking it beyond a mere chorus. By adding these poetic introductions, Mr. Harris, whose band also includes alto saxophonist Irwin Hall, bassist Jay White, and drummer Sylvia Cuenca, has further expanded those possibilities.  

As with the SF Jazz Collective’s latest project, this is another idea that deserves to find its way onto an album, hopefully soon.