Mood: Indigo, Sort Of.

Imagine going to a Muhammad Ali exhibition. He's pretty, fast, and can really really box, but you know he's just playing.

Then in the end he gets real and beautifully demolishes his sparring partner. All along the elements for a great fight had been there, but...

A part of jazz's appeal has always been it's ability to testify to the presence of the marginalised, to mount a counter narrative to the dominant culture on its own beautiful terms. Now jazz is the mainstream, with a body of work it accumulated for more than a century. Where has the sense of danger gone?

On Saturday 'An Evening with Branford Marsalis' at the RSJ, a part of The Bermuda Festival , played to a full and appreciative house. The quartet opened with John Lewis's 'Concord'.

It is a tune mined with the Baroque devices Lewis loved, transposing patterns across chord changes, for example, laying in wait for the improviser to exploit.

One heard right away the value this quartet placed on ensemble playing. The MJQ would have been proud. Marsalis has a beautiful tone on both tenor and soprano.

Jeff Watts shadows the group like a wise griot, commenting from time to time on the musical narrative with a well timed comment; a controlled roll on the tom-toms, perhaps ,that perfectly punctuates the saxophone's story.

Two compositions by members of the quartet followed. Pianist Joey Calderozzo's 'The Lonely Swan', and Watt's 'Lady Low'.

Imagine Chopin toying with Tropical and Beatles music.

Calderozzo is a restrained player, mostly, playing with dynamics, with great sensitivity to touch, so that the piano, which he often used as a second horn,with melismatic single note lines, seems to resemble the human voice.

At least so it seemed to me.

His solo on Watt's composition that followed was filled with nods to Thelonious Monk, again exploring the middle and low registers, in the bass's territory, really, so that one heard an unusual blend of tonal colour there.

Revis rhythm and placement were impeccable, no matter what tempo the quartet played... There was a number whose title I didn't quite get, that began with Watts playing a long solo, the sort drummers typically over do, that seem to have nothing to do with anything but their own self-delight; but, no this ranged through different styles and tempo, until, happily, one realised it was an introduction.

Then the quartet with Branford on soprano burned!

Some of the night's delights were Branford's tone, his concept of improvisation which is refreshingly free of stock 'licks'; instead you hear him search out logical next steps to certain phrases, transposing them across the chord changes two or three times, as motif, always tastefully; and like the most confident of improvisers, never afraid to use silence.

Once, reminiscent of his piano-less trio, Branford and the two sidemen got into a blistering session, while the pianist went for a beer!

When they played when the leader referred to as a tribute to suicide, Lady Day's 'Gloomy Sunday', one expected a exploration of the from the 'inside', as they say, of the ballad.

Instead, Marsalis seemed, to me, to hold back emotionally.

We had to wait until the encore to hear a classic ballad treatment.

Marsalis is bright and engaging, and apparently so cool on stage that he can take on the unrehearsed 'Sea Breeze', for which Romare Brearden wrote the lyrics.

Was the pianist coaching the bassist throughout the changes during the first chorus? Did it matter?

There was more than a nod to Ahmad Jamal.

The Cuban lady beside me asked if that bolero was Cuban!

Reflecting on the concert later, I felt I'd been to pictures at an exhibition, experiencing each well wrought work, then moving on.

It was the memory of the encore that stayed most insistently with me. When the audience called the Quartet back, Marsalis seemed to ask for 'Don't Get Around Much Any More' in a flurry of notes aimed at the pianist, but we were given instead 'Mood Indigo'.

It was so perfectly wrought, it glowed with a depth of emotional engagement that reminded me that Jazz is about feeling, as well as thinking.

Have you felt hungry after a gourmet meal? It was all good, but was it enough?