Ron Carter 88th Birthday Celebration
The Blue Note
Through May 4

If you haven’t been to a primetime show at the Blue Note in a while, let me remind you what it’s like: First of all, you’re packed in so tightly with the other jazz fans that you can barely move your arms to hold the spoon for your french onion soup. (Recommended.)  Still, the forced intimacy has its upside in that you tend to get to know your neighbors.  

On Thursday night I shared a table with five ladies conversing en Espanol. I’m guessing they were from Madrid or Barcelona. At the next table, there was a party from either Moscow or Kyiv — yes, I know that makes a big difference these days — and beyond that there was a table from either the West Indies or the African continent. And so on.  

Yes, the Blue Note, wherein bass legend Ron Carter is headlining all week, is quite probably the most international of all New York music venues, and I for one was happy that all these pan-global visitors were present, not least because this is the greatest American music that they could possibly be hearing, the very best that this country has to offer. Mr. Carter’s jazz is supremely accessible — you don’t have to be a hardcore modern jazz fan to enjoy it — and yet it’s profound enough to reward the deepest possible listening.

Celebrating his 88th birthday this week, Mr. Carter had planned to alternate between two ensembles: the quartet, sometimes billed as “Foursome,” with pianist Renee Rosnes, tenor saxophonist Jimmy Greene (appearing May 4), and drummer Payton Crossley; and his New Jazz Trio, with saxophonist Donald Harrison and pianist Donald Vega (appearing May 2 and May 3). However, as Ms. Rosness apparently has been ill, it looks like Mr. Vega will be playing the entire run.

Thursday’s set by the quartet with Mr. Vega followed the general outline of this group’s 2018 album, “Foursight – Stockholm, Vol. 2,” in that it was a mix of Mr. Carter’s originals plus a few tunes he learned from his career-making tenure with Miles Davis during that epochful period between 1963 and 1968. In a Miles-inspired move, the group without a pause moved from one song to another: “595” to “Mr. Bow Tie” to “Flamenco Sketches” and one that Mr. Carter played frequently with Davis, Victor Feldman’s “Seven Steps To Heaven.” Mr. Carter’s variation on that idea was to insert a brief bass-centric interlude between numbers, to mark the passage.

When Mr. Carter spoke for the first time, about 42 minutes in, he made a kind of apology that was entirely unnecessary, explaining that for him the most difficult part of being a bandleader was speaking to the audience. Yet as far as the collective house was concerned, he did just fine. The set built to two sublime meditations on standards, “My Funny Valentine” and “You and the Night and the Music.”  

Mr. Carter explained that the first was dedicated to those of us who were foolish enough to miss the big day on February 14. “Valentine” was fundamentally a duo between bass and piano, in which their collective improvisations leaned increasingly toward the familiar melody rather than away from it, and concluded with a very tender, almost Brahmesian lullaby recasting of the Rodgers and Hart standard. The soft-spoken Mr. Carter also explained that he intended his fast and swinging treatment of “You and the Night and the Music” quite literally in that the “you” of the title referred directly to the audience.

Still, for most of us, the highlight was his rhapsodic, unaccompanied bass rendition of a country music standard, “You Are My Sunshine,” which he embellished with ringing overtones and vintage singing cowboy-style vamps that reminded us that he is old enough to have spent his childhood in the age of Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, and, yes, the Bronze Buckaroo, Herb Jeffries. 

The house full of international tourists could have hardly failed to miss the significance: Here was a great American musician — a true jazz icon — performing as pure a slice of quintessential Americana as I have ever heard. It reminded me that I’m proud to be an American even when the current political situation seems grim.