No Newport Music Festival is complete without pianist John Bayless showing up. And last night the ingenious improviser of pop tunes in the style of the masters was back at The Breakers for some of his classic takes. It was quite a show.

Bayless opened the evening with selections from his 1984 album Bach Meets the Beatles, clever amalgams of “Hey Jude” and “Penny Lane” with well known Bach scores. Bayless told the audience that these pieces were born out of improvisations. That he selected Beatles songs then went looking for the appropriate work of Bach to complement them. Now, he said, these pieces have become “full-blown transcriptions.”

The best of the lot thoroughly integrate the music of Lennon and McCartney with familiar Baroque flourishes. These were catchy, innovative, and often inspired creations that made you appreciate the strengths of both the pop and classical writers.

In one of the sweetest of the set, Bayless seamlessly combined the plaintive strains of “Imagine” with the lilting aria from the Goldberg Variations.

But other arrangements tended to bounce back and forth between one and the other.

Bayless could also slip into bombast, bring up the theme in thundering bass lines, a style that seemed to pander to his enthusiastic fans.

“Eleanor Rigby” coupled with a Toccata in D Minor was a little off the wall.

The second set contained excerpts from a recent CD called Circle of Life, which features Elton John tunes in the style of Bach. This was in a lot of ways more of the same.

At this point, Bayless slid over to a fire-engine-red piano that looked like a replica of one used by John. It’s an $80,000 model that doubles as a sophisticated player piano that replicates John’s music.

But Bayless didn’t bother with any of that. He just used it as a straight acoustic instrument.

Again, there was a mix of tasteful tunes and arrangements that were a little over the top. Perhaps the most creative rendition of the set was a blending of “Daniel” and Bach’s chorale tune “Sleepers Awake.” The way the two themes were intertwined was fabulous.

The late hour of the program kept this reviewer from hanging in for the whole show. But after intermission, Bayless was set to tackle movie themes, and then, as he always does, to take suggestions from audience members and improvise on their favorite songs in the style of a favorite composer.

cgray@projo.com