Saturday, January 9, 2010 – Yoshi’s San Francisco – 8:00 p.m.

Roy Hargrove. Photo courtsey Groovin' High Records

Roy Hargrove and Pharoah Sanders… at first glance it might have looked like a misprint. But it was true.

Kicking off a two-week residency that Yoshi’s hopes to make an annual tradition, Hargrove’s quintet was booked at the club’s San Francisco stage for four nights with saxophonist Sanders as a special guest star. But would this unlikely pairing of divergent musical personalities work? On the one hand was a trumpeter who’s making the jazz mainstream cool again through his quintet, as well as his RH Factor group (playing the second half of the residency this week) and a classic big band. On the other side, an icon of the spiritualistic free-jazz movement, whose passionate, primal channeling of cosmic forces seems wholly at odds with Hargrove’s frictionless grooves.

The results, as displayed to a sell-out crowd in Saturday’s first set, were somewhat mixed. Hargrove was great. Sanders was great. Their brief on-stage collaboration was less than great, but the people got their money’s worth.

Hargrove’s group was fully in sync from the first moment. They opened with “Starmaker,” a cool indigo-toned ballad, then gradually turned up the heat over the next 40 minutes. Looking dapper in tan suit, stingy brim and brand-new Nikes, Hargrove drew a graceful, backwards arc with his body as he soloed, his horn pointing straight ahead. Even-tempered at first, Hargrove stayed warm and cozy on the slower numbers, but flared up and rode his band’s rhythmic surges like a rodeo cowboy, responding to pressure from drummer Montez Coleman with a powerful trill that may have cut a hole in the ozone layer.

When Sanders emerged, with his white beard and intense gaze, the rhythm section suddenly sounded like a completely different band, now playing the outside of the rhythm. Chalk that up to the versatility of Coleman and bassist Ameen Saleem, but even more remarkable was the fluid playing of pianist Sullivan Fortner. In the first half of the show, Fortner’s economical but emotionally rich lines were like a flowing stream, pursuing a multitude of melodic ideas without sacrificing clarity. But behind Sanders, he became a mystic, his playing saturated with ethereal colors as if cast from a stained-glass window. Sanders’ own solo was as serious as your life, building up in density and dynamism from discrete arpeggios to throaty cries.

Hargrove and Sanders stayed clear of each other at first, but came together for two final tunes, “The Serenity of Solitude” and “Camaraderie.” Sanders lost his place in the former, temporarily depriving the lovely, dusky ballad of some harmony, but once he recovered the results were fascinating. Hargrove’s approach to the tune was romantic and sexy. But Sanders came at it with a feeling of deep, devotional reverence that transformed the tune into a kind of prayer.

This last section of the concert was all about the reconciliation of divergent styles — in addition to Hargrove’s cool glide and Sanders’ rootsy fire, alto saxophonist Justin Robinson’s straight-up bebop lines (at one point directly quoting Charlie Parker) added further diversity. But even if a true unity of spirit proved elusive, the experiment was clearly a success. All parties involved played beautifully, and the rhythm section did much to bridge the gaps.

And now Bay Area jazz fans can say it: “I saw Roy and Pharoah play together once. No, really!”