For years, I've noticed the listings for the fall and spring jazz series at the Montpelier Arts Center, but had never gone until a couple of weeks ago. The center, just off the B-W Parkway in Laurel, is one of these converted old buildings (was it a barn?) that now houses gallery spaces and working art studios. You listen to the music -- they host a Sunday classical chamber series as well -- in one of the galleries, sitting with about 150 people amidst some paintings and looking up both at the raised stage and the high, inside-of-a-barn ceiling.

 

Mostly, they showcase locals (on Friday, it's Ronnie Wells, and on October 20 it's the great youngish drummer Winard Harper). I was finally drawn to Montpelier, though, by a lovely player with a national reputation, pianist Cedar Walton.

 

Walton is one of these guys -- Jimmy Heath, Roy Haynes, James Moody -- who generally worked as a sideman to more celebrated players but now is regarded as a headline act in his old age. I heard Walton play alongside the underrated alto player Sonny Stitt and tenor man John Handy at the first jazz club show I ever went to, at the old Keystone Korner in San Francisco, maybe 25 years ago. In subsequent years, I heard him back up vibes player Milt Jackson more than once. Lately, I've had the chance to hear him solo or leading trios, as he did at Montpelier.

 

Walton's playing is always smart and elegant. He has an assured touch and the big ears of a professional sideman. He'll play the melody very much straight, with few embellishments, and then his solos will focus on one or two ideas on which he'll offer variations for a short while.

 

Some pianist once said that it was impossible to improvise on Billy Strayhorn's "Lush Life," because the tune is perfect as it is. That might be worth arguing about, and certainly the lyrics are not the beau ideal. Walton did play the tune as straight as it allows, but played it at a slightly faster tempo than normal. It's such a lachrymose song that people who do play it usually fill it with woe, so his approach made it fresh. It came as part of a fine Strayhorn medley that also included "Daydream" and "Rain Check."

 

Walton also played some other standards ("Time After Time," "Let's Fall in Love"), a couple of his own compositions, something by Monk and the song "Ugetsu," from his days with the drummer Art Blakey.

 

He was accompanied by David Williams, who elicited a lot of response from the audience by slapping hard on the bass strings during his solos, and drummer Joseph Farnsworth. They were in many ways a model trio, bringing a lot of taste and talent to bear on pretty tunes.

 

In short, it was a perfect mellow sort of scene, sitting in an art gallery, listening to soft jazz that rewarded close attention.