Catching up with Clarke, still playing like dynamite

Just after banjo master Béla Fleck solos on a John Coltrane tribute called "Song to John," bassist Stanley Clarke perks up. Bunching his fingers low on his massive acoustic bass, Clarke transforms his big string thing into a mimic of its tiny cousin, imitating the banjo's sound and attack.

It's a bravado moment that captures Clarke's mischievous side and technical mastery.

The occasion is captured on a 90-minute DVD, Night School: An Evening With Stanley Clarke and Friends.

Clarke, who burst from Philadelphia in the 1970s to form the jazz-rock fusion band Return to Forever with Chick Corea, holds a scholarship concert every year. The guests in this 2002 version, to be released today, include Stevie Wonder, trumpeter Wallace Roney, and bassist Marcus Miller.

The DVD enables you to catch up with Clarke's post-'70s triumphs. He shows off his film credits by directing a string orchestra over his "Theme From Boyz N the Hood." He yucks it up with drummer Gerry Brown, a Clarke homey from Philly who now drums for Stevie Wonder. And he directs a phalanx of 10 bassists on his signature hit, "School Days."

Much of it isn't that scintillating; there's this L.A. adulation aspect to the proceedings, like an Academy Awards show gone funky, and the accompanying interviews are boilerplate. But Clarke flat-out can play, and that redeems this set.

A highlight is Stevie Wonder's rendition of "Every Day I Have the Blues," which the former wunderkind delivers in a voice that's thinner than you remember but is still resolute and freewheeling. Wonder even gives a fluid but brief solo on the keys over the daunting chords of "Giant Steps."

Clarke, a serious jazz player before he got famous, gives a reasonable take of Charles Mingus' "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat." This version holds Clarke's musical DNA: part soul, part smooth jazz, part heavy metal.

He also gets on with the versatile rocker Flea, also known as Michael Balzary, bassist of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. The two engage in long moments of nodding funkitude before the skins get pounded by Sheila E., formerly known as Prince's drummer. She may look like Tony Soprano's psychiatrist but she doesn't get guilty over making hits.