30 Years Later, Three Bands From New York’s Downtown Scene Unite for One Night

Near the end of an hourlong set at the Kitchen on Saturday, the Jazz Passengers worked their way into “We’re All Jews,” a playful and pungent original with a bawling melody. Saxophone, trombone and violin all tangled as the bass and vibraphone built a dicey polyrhythm underneath. The tune’s melody almost name-checked the early years of Ornette Coleman’s Prime Time, but really it went past that. It reached back and grabbed onto Coleman’s own reference points: the chirruping bebop of Charlie Parker, Southern soul saxophone, the old Jewish prayer song that he loved.

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