OTTAWA — Scratch a veteran smooth jazzer and underneath you might find a jazzer.

So it seemed from Monday night’s TD Ottawa Jazz Festival concert by Bob James and David Sanborn. The two jazz stars, co-leading an acoustic group with drum legend Steve Gadd and rock-solid, scene-stealingly good acoustic bassist Scott Colley, played with not only crowd-pleasing accessibility but great intensity and sincere commitment, too.

While they might be renowned for a string of polished, funky studio efforts that opened the door for the vapidity of Kenny G and the smooth jazz ilk, James and Sanborn, while true to their signature sounds, were not making background music. The concert was certainly polished and smooth, groovy and bluesy, but smooth jazz in the elevator-music sense it wasn’t.

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