It's a shame saxophonist Jemeel Moondoc doesn't (or doesn't have the opportunity to) spend more time leading large ensembles. Shame because, while he can play fast and free as well as 100 other players in this town (and better than another 1,000), he's a hell of a bandleader, and not in the overwraught post-Trane mold. He swings slow and sweet, crazy bluesy. He knows that the music didn't start with Ascension but goes back at least to Ellington and up through Ornette, and isn't just jazz but Big Joe Williams and T-Bone Walker too.

Or at least he seems to, but it doesn't matter what he's got in his record collection. Wherever it comes from, we need more like him: more bandleaders that can get the music to the point where they just smile and clap in rhythm.

Moondoc arrnaged a great octet for this free show in an East Village community garden (his second in what he said will be an annual event), with Roy Cambell and Nathan Breedlove on trumpets, Steve Swell on trombone and Zane Massey and Michael Marcus on saxophones, with a rhythm section comprised of drummer Reggie Nicholson, bassist William Parker and Bern Nix on guitar, And yes, just like the old days, the guitar was a part of the rhythm section.

Nix was also the sweet spot. While he's probably best known for his seat in Ornette Coleman's Prime Time through the '80s, Nix was almost miscast in that band. He's more at home with chordal accents, and is generally seen around town playing standards. Something happened in the last couple decades where all the jazz guitarists either crank what their mamas gave 'em through a rack of distortion or think they're something special in saying they play their instrument like a saxophone when God knows we already have enough saxophonists. Nix kicks it with the high hat and lets his big old hollow body ring.

The group presented two rolling, composed suites in two brief sets, illumed by porch lights with the hanging willow branches that let you know you're in Alphabet City brushing the tops of their heads. "That was easily recognizeable as blues, right?" Moondoc said after they played a piece called "Blues for You, Blues for your Mama and Daddy Too," although the question really didn't need to be asked. After a cold and rainy week, the clouds relented for an end-of-the-summer party, complete with a keg and watermelon. And Jemeel Moondoc, ever in a fashionable hat, was the perfect host.