The concert closes with Freddie Hubbard's uptempo blues in F at 157 BPM, featuring the evening's most extended and evenly distributed solo section. Dillard and Cohen each deliver five choruses on tenor saxophone and piano respectively, while Wolfe adds three on acoustic bass — thirteen combined choruses that give the seven-minute finale a satisfying sense of everyone getting a final say. The tempo gradually decelerates across the three solos, settling from 157 to 139 BPM as the performance winds down. Hubbard composed Birdlike as a hard-swinging blues head in the Charlie Parker tradition, and its straightforward twelve-bar form provides the perfect vehicle for a closing jam. The balanced solo distribution — five, five, and three — feels deliberate and democratic after a concert where the solo lengths varied widely. Ending on a blues brings the program full circle, connecting the evening's explorations of Monk, Gillespie, and ballad repertoire back to jazz's most fundamental form.
