By BILL WHITE
SPECIAL TO THE POST-INTELLIGENCER

Voices from Africa and Brazil joined a panoply of local musicians to bring the Earshot Jazz Festival to a resounding close this weekend.

The Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra filled Nordstrom Recital Hall on Saturday night with the music of master arranger Gerald Wilson. Spry at age 89, Wilson was a joy to behold as he led the band through seven remarkable pieces of music, beginning with "Hi Spook," written in 1940 for Jimmie Lunceford.

The stories behind the songs, such as Wilson's developing an arrangement for "Stomping at the Savoy" into an original composition, were as entertaining as the music itself.

"Blues for the Count" was the evening's centerpiece, with exciting solos all around. Trumpeter Vern Siebert deserves a special mention, not only for his contribution on this tune, but for his excellent playing throughout the night. Wilson took great pleasure in the band's solos, and paid particular attention to pianist Larry Fuller, whom he encouraged to "give us a few Basie cliches."

The prettiest tune was "Romance," one of six parts of the piece Wilson wrote to commemorate the Monterey Jazz Festival's 40th anniversary. SRJO co-director Michael Brockman was a tough heartbreaker on the soprano saxophone, with gorgeous tone and wrenching phrasing. Brockman's own arrangement of Duke Ellington's "Come Sunday" was a highlight of the concert's opening half.

Across the street at The Triple Door, the Gangbe Brass Band combined elements of Dixieland and Afropop into a rhythm-and-chant groove that never missed a beat. The 10-member group was split evenly between horn players and percussionists. Different singers took their turns at the center mike while the rest supplied harmonies that often were more melodic than the lead vocals.

The band, formed in Benin, West Africa, is based in Paris, and seems more intent upon entertaining Western audiences than celebrating traditional dance and storytelling. Often clunky and cacophonous, the music was good fun, but hardly the heady stuff of jazz festivals.

The Triple Door's theatrical lighting gave it the aspect of an exotic floor show, while the state-of-the-art sound system maintained a balanced mix despite the constant shuffling and rearrangement of the musicians.

Aside from a pocket of dancers in the front, most of the patrons remained seated until the very end, when they were cajoled through participation in a call-and-response chorus to stand up and join in the dance.

Although she sang entirely in Portuguese, the beauty of her voice fully expressed the lyricism of the music. The slower the song, the more dynamic was her performance. Midway through the first set, she brought up the tempo, and did a sultry dance with her cellist, who had switched to the tambourine. The crowd went mad, but the mystical spell was broken.

Across town, at Consolidated Works, drummer Gregg Keplinger was leading his newest brainchild. With Ann Talbot (guitar, vocals), Michael Monhart (tenor saxophone) and Paul Kikuchi (homemade percussion), Keplinger carved a road to a jazz future with all the musical tools of his imagination.

Kikuchi rattled and clanged his instruments while Talbot ground out fuzz noises from her guitar. It sounded like bells and chainsaws. Keplinger, who should be forced to register his drumsticks as lethal weapons, began by punctuating the xylophone before pulling a deep rumble from drums, bringing the music into a darkly dense sphere.

Matching the drum tone with the lower register of his tenor, Monhart jumped in for an energetic blow that was capped off with a minor blues number from Talbot that took its cues from Portishead. The band snapped into a deliberate rhythm, leaving its floating tonalities behind as they coalesced into a futuristic rock band with the technique of jazz masters.