It’s official: Calcutta loves its jazz. On August 28, the Lincoln Room of the American Center came alive with the jams of the Rhythm Road All-Stars jazz quartet, digging deeper into Thelonious Monk and discussing the art of blending rhythm, tempo and melody at a lecture recital. A few hours later, the band — comprising drummer/band-leader Alvin Atkinson Jr, trumpeter Charlie Porter, double bass player Ari Roland and pianist Eli Yamin — proceeded to wow a full house at the Palladian Lounge of the Bengal Chamber of Commerce.

Designed to take American jazz to audiences worldwide, Jazz at Lincoln Centre’s The Rhythm Road programme rolled out its 18th chapter on August 18. The quartet kick-started its tour with Africa — where it performed at a cultural centre in the middle of a village in Mali — and moved on to China to wrap up the last leg of the mini world tour.

With performers like Atkinson Jr — who has recorded and toured with jazz stalwarts like saxophonists Branford Marsalis and Jimmy Heath and trumpeter Roy Hargrove — the ‘all-stars’ tag sits easy on this energetic bunch; each member being a band-leader back home. Atkinson Jr teaches jazz language and rhythm studies at Lincoln Centre’s Middle School Jazz Academy, where Amin is the director of jazz.

The workshop commenced with a short musical introduction, followed by a volley of questions to and from the audience. On communicating through a piece of music, Atkinson Jr explained: “We come in together and slowly build it up through improvisation and articulation, bringing in our own flavours without losing the basic structure.” Comparisons between Indian classical music and jazz ensued, as the musicians stressed the “illusion” of both ragas and jazz creating alternative aural ranges while actually “remaining within a set form”.

Atkinson Jr went on to draw parallels from experiences outside music, from boxing to cooking and storytelling, for a comparative study of styles and techniques that work in a similar fashion in jazz music. “Playing jazz is like preparing the Louisiana gumbo meal!” he laughed. Describing the music as an “aural tradition”, Roland emphasised the need for budding musicians to find their own voice and style. Doubts about the waning interest in jazz were dealt with by Yamin. “The commercial part of jazz is on the margins but we’re trying to remedy that. There are a lot of great jazz artistes around but we need to build a bigger audience,” he said.

If the morning rendition of Thelonious Monk’s Evidence was to demonstrate how things could go awry when musicians do not listen to each other, the evening’s concert at the Palladian Lounge offered inspired improvised interplay. The quartet’s vibe was infectious; getting the audience into the mood to move to the music from the word go as it launched into a swung-out version of It Don’t Mean a Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing. Two standards later — Charlie Parker’s Now’sThe Time and the ‘correct’ version of Evidence, executed with a crystalline touch and infused with a gamut of nods towards the Afro-Cuban heritage — the band launched into the hushed, haunting Rwanda Child, a piece by pianist Amin on the Rwanda genocide. Displaying brilliant dynamics as a group, this composition was the high point of the performance.

Porter shone with his trumpet and Yamin showed his true colours as a flamboyant soloist on Atkinson Jr’s original Ain’t Dorris, a funky shuffle piece dedicated to “mother’s culinary skills”. The concert closer was supposed to be Dizzy Gillespie’s Night In Tunisia, rendered in very Cuban colours. But the band gave in to the Calcutta crowd’s “one more” cries, and rounded off the evening with a brilliant New Orleans second-line-inspired version of When The Saints Go Marching In. A clincher, if the frail ladies standing up for the ovation and a bit of the swing were anything to go by.