Branford Marsalis cranks out assured jazz with attitude

During a brief discussion prior to his Annenberg Center performance on Thursday, Branford Marsalis offered a simple formula for the music he prefers: "If I can sing it, it's good; if I can't sing it, I reject it."

Dogmatic pronouncements on music seem to come with the Marsalis name, but where younger brother Wynton is the jazz fundamentalist, saxophonist Branford likes to play the cranky provocateur. That's epitomized in the title of his quartet's most recent release, Four MFs Playin' Tunes, which seems to promise un-selfconscious musicianship with a dose of puckish attitude.

There was no shortage of singable melodies during the 80-minute set, but the band's thrilling interactions belied the leader's simplistic criteria. Throughout Marsalis' career, his tastes have allowed for stints with Sting and the Grateful Dead as well as his own pioneering acid-jazz group Buckshot LeFonque. Thursday's set ranged from the calypso-tinged vigor of pianist Joey Calderazzo's "The Mighty Sword" to the funereal sizzle of the encore, the New Orleans classic "St. James Infirmary Blues."

Attitude was on full display as well. The show was bookended with complaints about the day's bitter cold, with "St. James" an attempt to "take y'all down to New Orleans where it's warm." Marsalis paused while introducing the band to glare at a few late arrivals, who hurried to find their seats - then he laughed, saying, "I just like messing with people."

That includes his band. Drummer Justin Faulkner, a West Philly native, was greeted by audience members shouting his name. "Don't start that nonsense already," Marsalis barked, though he gave Faulkner the last word in the set, ending with a frenzied drum solo.

Faulkner, who joined the band in 2009 on his 18th birthday, is the newest member of a quartet that has otherwise been together since the late 1990s, and that longevity was obvious in the way they brought out on another's most impassioned playing. Marsalis began the show on soprano saxophone, unfurling sinuous lines over the increasingly robust rhythms on both "The Mighty Sword" and bassist Eric Revis' cascading ballad "Maestra." He switched to a honking, Sonny Rollins-influenced tenor sound for Thelonious Monk's "Teo" and played a soulful lament over the rhythm section's crashing waves on his own "A Thousand Autumns." One highlight was a loose-limbed, down-home transformation of Irving Berlin's "Cheek to Cheek."