This review is long past due. DCist began its jazz coverage over six months ago and only now are we covering a performance at the venerable Twins Jazz. A mainstay of the D.C. jazz scene, first with its Colorado Ave. location and now with new digs on U Street, the club, especially on weekends, hosts respected musicians who draw national attention, but who are also a bit too experimental for venues such as Blues Alley or the Kennedy Center. The featured performer this past weekend was none other than Reggie Workman, a consummate artist who is not only a gifted musician, but who has also been working with Twins for the past several months in assembling his Sculptured Sound concert series, which has brought some of the most adventurous acoustic jazz musicians in the country to the nation’s capital.

Workman, a bassist and composer, has been at the cutting edge of jazz since the 1960s, when he recorded seminal albums with artists such as John Coltrane, Art Blakey and Wayne Shorter. Workman is known not only for his full bodied tone and masterful technique, but also for his ability to straddle the line between traditional song forms and more avant-garde jazz stylings. Workman is also a dedicated educator, passing along his vast knowledge to the next generation of jazz musicians.

Workman’s partners were drummer Rashied Ali and pianist Hal Galper. Ali, a pioneering drummer in the free jazz movement, is one of the first drummers who developed an interactive style of playing that abandoned a traditional metered and timekeeping approach to the instrument. Galper is a musician who has not achieved the level of notoriety he deserves, but is recognized in jazz circles as one of the most versatile and skilled pianists in the country.