Monty Alexander is a great pianist, so why did I find his performance at Kilbourn Hall Thursday night so lacking? In the opening tune he cut a wide swath through the history of jazz, touching on ragtime, stride, boogie-woogie, barrelhouse, honky-tonk and bop. But it seemed like he was more interested in showing off than telling us, through his music, what he was about.

All of the spontaneity that's at the core of jazz was missing. Everything seemed rehearsed, down pat. A bass solo was so full of cute quotations it seemed like one long cliché. All of Alexander's responses to his bassist and drummer seemed telegraphed. He even cued the audience to clap with a nod.

To be fair, the audience seemed to love every minute. Maybe Alexander got more to the core of the music later, but I felt like I was missing real heart-felt music and left early to catch British saxophonist Tony Kofi at Christ Church.

Kofi and his band were just what I looking for; every solo was a genuine exploration. No one was looking to impress, or signaling applause --- these guys were there to play.

Kofi's tunes were abstractions, but they reflected his feelings about his life, in one case the first breath of one of his children, who almost didn't live through birth. It was a moving tune.

His up-tempo compositions were excellent, with heads reminiscent of great Art Blakey tunes. And the band members cooked with the intensity of John Coltrane's classic quartet, especially when they tacked Thelonious Monk's "Trinkle Tinkle." Kofi's playing was influenced by Coltrane, but that influence did not dominate.

I stopped into the Eastman Theatre to catch some of Michael McDonald's set only to find myself revisiting an old conundrum that I hadn't thought about since the 1970's. Maybe you can answer it. Stick with me now, it's a bit complicated.

McDonald wrote "You Belong To Me" with Carly Simon, and when Simon recorded it in the late 1970's, she sang: "Tell her, you belong to me." We all knew what she meant: some other woman was after her man.

But when McDonald recorded it with the Doobie Brothers around the same time, he also sang, "Tell her, you belong to me." And when he sang it Thursday night the paradox came back to me.

Was he telling his girlfriend to tell her potential lesbian lover to get lost? Or was he telling his male lover to tell off a female who was intruding on their gay relationship? Or does Michael McDonald not know what he is singing? Maybe he was just way, way ahead of his time.

Anyway, McDonald wowed the crowd with his great old hits like "Minute By Minute" and several Motown staples like "Ain't Nothin' Like The Real Thing."

I found the real thing --- soul man, that is --- over at the Montage Grille: Ryan Shaw. What a phenomenal singer! He began with a beautiful a cappella version of Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come," setting the pace for an incredible soul set.

Shaw's own songs were OK, but they really couldn't compete with the classics he sang by Bobby Womack, Bob Marley and Bert Berns and Jerry Ragovoy (who wrote Janis Joplin's "Piece of My Heart").

And that "Real Love" sing-along at the end? I don't know about you, but it's still swirling around in my head. You can catch Shaw Friday at one of the free outdoor stages.

Tomorrow night I'm going to hear the great Pat Martino and see who turns up to pay tribute to one of Rochester's greatest saxophonists, the late Joe Romano.