By Jon Garelick

Most in the Berklee audience seemed satisfied with the chance to be in South African pianist Abdullah Ibrahim’s presence, subdued perhaps, but still casting a magisterial aura.

Abdullah Ibrahim Trio at the Berklee Performance Center, Boston. Presented by Celebrity Series of Boston on November 16

Pianist Abdullah Ibrahim at Berklee Performance Center. Photo: Robert Torres, courtesy of the Celebrity Series of Boston.

Great artists have different ways in which to cast their spells. The illustrious 90-year-old South African pianist Abdullah Ibrahim stepped onstage at the Berklee Performance Center Saturday night slightly stooped, in a black suit with open-collared shirt and a white pocket square, smiling to an enthusiastic ovation, and was helped to the piano bench. Settled in, he looked at his two bandmates, Cleave Guyton and Noah Jackson, ready to play. But not immediately.

Ibrahim has been a major international figure since at least the early ’70s with the release of several startling solo piano discs (as Dollar Brand, the name he used before converting to Islam), which showcased his Cape Town-inspired melodies, hymns, and strong elemental grooves. The release of two albums on the Enja label in the ’80s, African Marketplace and Water From an Ancient Well, with his ensemble Ekaya, further broadened his reach, establishing his standing as a jazz musician of uncommon scope and depth. By then, he was already a hero of the anti-apartheid movement — his 1974 piece “Mannenberg” (named for the South Africa township) is considered the unofficial national anthem of South Africa.

At Berklee, Guyton “doubling” on flute, clarinet and Jackson on bass launched into Ellington’s “In a Sentimental Mood” as Ibrahim watched, Guyton’s flute round-toned and full, tongue-trilling lightly at the turn into the final phrase before elaborating with rhythmic extensions and reaches into the upper register. A pause, and then Coltrane’s “Giant Steps,” giving Jackson an uptempo pizzicato workout of chord changes and exclamatory double-stops. Then Guyton and Jackson exited backstage, and Ibrahim played for the first time, gently teasing out a melody that gradually found its way into the upper register as his left hand patiently spelled out rhythm and harmony. Then the band returned and Ibrahim shifted into his own standard, “Water from an Ancient Well,” drawing applause and comping for Guyton’s flute solo. Soon the band took over and Ibrahim laid out again. The evening continued to unfold that way – duo pieces for Guyton and Jackson, with understated solo interludes from Ibrahim, who barely even comped for the other two players.

(l to r), Abdullah Ibrahim, Noah Jackson and Cleave Guyton at Berklee Performance Center. Photo: Robert Torres, courtesy of the Celebrity Series of Boston.

Guyton and Jackson — both veterans of Ekaya, with Guyton going back at least 40 years, Ibrahim told GBH radio — provided plenty of textural variety and pacing offsetting the solo piano’s ballad tempos. Jackson doubled on flute and, perhaps most refreshingly, piccolo, while Jackson occasionally switched over to cello for pizzicato and bowed excursions. Aside from the nine Ibrahim originals the band played (no titles were announced from the stage, and Ibrahim did not address the crowd), there was Monk’s “Skippy” (Ibrahim, laying out again, unfortunately) with piccolo and at least one other uptempo piccolo feature that roared with riffing crescendos.

There was one solo piano passage, more than half-way through the roughly 90-minute set, where Ibrahim’s meditations took on a somber cast, still rooted in what I can only call Cape Town chords, but now with a more anxious drift into dissonance, the left-hand bass a kind of mournful stalking figure. For a moment, I thought we were going to shift into one of Ran Blake’s Bernard Herrmann fantasias. Ibrahim, meanwhile, was vocalizing, solfeggio style. After a series of solo features that sounded like personal memory books, here Ibrahim was digging for something.

After a standing ovation, the band played a brief encore, flute and cello, with Ibrahim playing an isolated bass note here and there. A two-disc live set, 3 (Gearbox), recorded in summer 2023 in London and released earlier this year, shows the trio in fuller three-way engagement. And some in the Berklee audience perhaps missed the rolling ebullience and fully fleshed out Ellingtonian lyricism of earlier Ekaya recordings. The band had played New York the night before, and Ibrahim was scheduled for a solo show in Wroclaw, Poland, on the 24^th. For now, most in the Berklee audience seemed satisfied with the chance to be in Ibrahim’s presence, subdued perhaps, but still casting a magisterial aura.

Jon Garelick can be reached at garelickjon@gmail.com. For a review of 3, and a comprehensive overview of Abdullah Ibrahim’s career, see Steve Elman’s Arts Fuse essay.