JAZZ REVIEW : Vibraphonist Charlie Shoemake at Le Cafe

Practicing what one preaches is not the easiest task in music, but for 15 years Charlie Shoemake has combined his busy career as a teacher with appearances and recordings as a vibraphonist and composer.

Sunday evening at Le Cafe in Sherman Oaks, he hit the ground flying. Playing an original tune, “Stand-Up Guys,” he took an opening solo that ran to an estimated 2,500 notes, more than half of them evenly spaced eighth notes. Technical expertise as a means to an end is admirable, but Shoemake’s explosion was not even sound and fury; in fact, a little fury would have been welcome.

Things changed for the better when, slowing the tempo, he displayed his affinity for the blues on an old Charlie Parker line, “Barbados.” The double-time flurries made sense, tempered as they were by moments of relaxation. But Shoemake came closer to a full display of emotion in “I Thought About You,” launching the old standard with a pensive four-mallet introduction.

The sound of surprise in this group was supplied most vividly by Randy Cannon. A former Shoemake student, Cannon is a pianist of formidable gifts, with great dynamic variety and consistently galvanizing rhythmic sensitivity. His two section mates, Bob Maize on bass and Larance Marable on drums, pulled their familiar and very considerable weight.

The set ended with a group of songs by Sandi Shoemake, truly one of the most underrated of local vocal talents. Singing two of her husband’s originals, “Satin Nights” and “Old Acquaintance” (with lyrics by Arthur Hamilton) as examples of what he described as “our idea of what contemporary music should be,” she brought purity and jazz-informed intelligence to these well-crafted songs, then capped herself with a beautifully modulated rendition of an old and neglected ballad, “When Your Lover Has Gone.”

The quartet rounded off the set with a version of “Get Happy” that began well, with Shoemake playing rubato, but led inevitably to the seemingly unrelated and lengthy drum solo that now seems mandatory in every set by every group. A well-played solo, to be sure, but would Harold Arlen have recognized his “Get Happy”?