Double duty from a Lovano quintet

Saxophonist Joe Lovano has worked in many configurations, from orchestras to nonets to duos, since he began recording in the mid-'80s. Us Five, the band he brought to Chris' Jazz Cafe on Thursday, was again something different: a quintet with two drummers, Francisco Mela and Otis Brown 3d.

Positioned on either end of the bandstand, the drummers grinned at each other and seemed to approach their situation as a game.

First, the young Mela joined Lovano and veteran bassist Cameron Brown, swinging hard in 4/4 while Otis Brown waited. Without dropping the beat, they switched, and Brown, who is not related to the bassist, kept strong, fluid time under James Weidman's piano solo.

In a sense, the band was two trios.

There were times, however, when Lovano wanted a double-strength cannonade of simultaneous percussion. He got it during the finale, an up-tempo treatment of John Coltrane's "Fifth House."

"My Little Brown Book," the Billy Strayhorn ballad, framed Lovano's tenor in a softer, warmer light, less Coltrane and more Ben Webster, reflecting his omnivorous ease with jazz tradition.

More pervasive still was the influence of Ornette Coleman, on the bustling original "Ettenro" ("Ornette" backward) and Coleman's unfathomably dark "Lonely Woman."

As Otis Brown nudged the latter into a trancelike vamp, Lovano moved from an unusually rich-sounding soprano sax to an aulochrome - essentially two sopranos cobbled together, allowing Lovano to play polyphonically and create counterpoint.

Parts of the set, including "Us Five," "Topsy Turvy" and the multipart "Dawn of Time," were arrayed in a suite, with elements woven together by solo drum interludes and out-of-tempo musings. The themes were devilish in their detail - sequences of halting, corkscrew rhythm set up the densely patterned improvisations.

Lovano's sandpapery tone and liquid phrasing gave a rich contrast, as always. His keening legato passages and hyperspeed bundles of notes kept his listeners, including his band, consistently on edge.