More openly a multi-instrumentalist, Joey DeFranceso sizzles with variety at the Jazz Kitchen

While his Hammond B-3 awaited at center stage, Joey DeFrancesco began the first of two sets Saturday

Joey DeFrancesco in a formal pose

night at the Jazz Kitchen with forays into his other instruments: trumpet and tenor saxophone.

Touring behind a new recording simply titled "More Music," the Philadelphia musician returned to the Kitchen for the first time since Feb. 29, 2020, he recalled for the audience as the set got under way. That was on the brink of everybody's forced vacation. 

That idled DeFrancesco and so many others for over a year, during which time he honed his chops on those two wind instruments and wrote the pieces for the new CD, many of which he and his trio brought out here. His current tour has him assisted by Lucas Brown, a guitarist-keyboardist, and Anwar Marshall, drums.

Starting with trumpet, both muted and open, which he's played professionally since his teens (he's now 50),  DeFrancesco and his trio set sail with a piece called "Free," which was succeeded by one written for his wife called "Lady G." That provided him with a turn on tenor sax, backed astutely by Brown. The bandleader as a saxophonist had a slightly rough, but tender, sound well-suited to a love song and somewhat recalling how his idol Pharoah Sanders approached ballads. The new release features DeFrancesco as saxophonist for the first time on record.

He next moved to the Hammond B-3, with which he has principally been associated for decades, in order for the trio to deliver his mash-up of two jazz classics, "Confirmation" and "Giant Steps." He calls it "Roll With It," and he was clearly in his element, with those long, looping phrases that sometimes seem overloaded with decorative elements but always manage to right themselves rhythmically. DeFrancesco always knows where the accents should fall, which makes him a super-adaptable partner with drummers, as he was throughout the set with Marshall.

A piece focused on a quality widely known as "funky," otherwise unidentified by title, followed. It incorporated a rhythmic-melodic phrase that DeFrancesco taught the audience to sing — something on the order of "baba-doo, ba-bebop" to start with, then capped by a couple of separated syllables. The audience was amply responsive; for his main solo, DeFrancesco launched into his most flamboyant manner, folding in what sounded like a splendid tribute to Stevie Wonder's "Isn't She Lovely?" 

With the versatile Brown moving back to guitar, the set formally concluded with the title tune from "More Music," where he interpolated another famous quotation. It was the evergreen "Back Home in Indiana," which seems to have suggested an obvious encore devoted specifically to that song. It unfolded in wholehearted fashion, decked out first in a fast tempo, then a slow one. 

There were shouts for still "more music," but it was obviously a good place for the performance to end, and a break was in order before the second set — the last of four in the trio's engagement here.