Jeremy Steig Quartet, Jazz Workshop, Boston
w/Mike Mainieri (vibraharp), Hal Gaylor (bass), and Donald MacDonald (drums)
by Alan Heineman
This is, originally, a fine jazz quartet. It’s a tragedy that is no longer that six-man Jeremy and the Satyrs, a group that during its relatively short life suggested the only viable direction so far demonstrated for a full fusion of jazz and rock-not one genre with hints of the other, not a song-by-song alternation between the two, but a new, dynamic and frequently electrifying hybrid. The current quartet alludes to the idiom often, and MacDonald is at home in either bag, but it’s a jazz band now–as the Gray Burton Quartet has always been, critical bayings to the contrary notwithstanding…