The shape of jazz to come

Stepping into B. Sakata Garo this month is like walking through a hall of free-jazz album covers from the late 1950s and early 1960s. The man-sized abstract canvases by Mike Henderson, in a show titled Light, sound & paint, really evoke the kind of weather-tinged day that goes perfect with one of John Coltrane’s or Ornette Coleman’s quartet sides. Henderson laid the oil paints on so thick you can smell them, in large, squarish, quilt-like patterns, and then he scraped some of it away to give his pieces some texture. You can spend a minute or spend all afternoon looking at them at the gallery, located at 923 20th Street, but you’d better do it by December 4, when the show closes. Even if you’re not a jazzhead, you’ll dig Henderson’s visuals.