The Allman Brothers Band Plays Final Concert at the Beacon Theater

The Allman Brothers Band played its first set on Tuesday night at the Beacon Theater sounding relaxed and steady, on midboil, with some fairly long pauses between songs - 'One Way Out,' 'Good Morning Little Schoolgirl,' 'Midnight Rider,' and so on.

The recognizable details of an Allman Brothers set were there: shuffles, fast and slow blues, harmonized guitar melodies and sequential solos by Warren Haynes and Derek Trucks. Transitional arrangements were carpentered into the music and improvised drum passages came in triplicate from Jaimoe, Butch Trucks (Derek's uncle) and Marc Quiñones. But the mood registered somewhere between steady and spooky: the sound of a band under pressure but peaceful, almost as if it were playing for itself.

Tuesday's concert was, as far as anyone can see, the Allman Brothers' last. It was billed that way in advance and confirmed as such by the band's leader, Gregg Allman, last week before the first of their six Beacon shows. Of course, they could form again for an awards show or a benefit, or something, somewhere. Still, it looks reasonably final.

Statistics: This is the 45th year of the band, and the 15th of this version of the band, with Mr. Trucks and Mr. Haynes. It has played an engagement nearly every year since 1989 at the Beacon Theater - more than 230 concerts. Both its guitarists announced in January that they intended to leave the group by the end of this year.

The group intended its Beacon concerts in March of this year to be its last, but the run was cut short by four shows because Mr. Allman developed bronchitis. That final stretch of four concerts plus an added two were what ended at 1:25 a.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 29. It was 43 years to the day that Duane Allman, Mr. Allman's brother and the group's first leader, died. Several of his guitars were played for the occasion.

The last time I saw the band, in March, the first set was the thing, where the group found its tautness and energy and started to hover; the second set was about stretching out. Tuesday's show had a different build altogether.

No guest musicians sat in on Tuesday, or through any of these final concerts, as had often been the case over the years. Instead of routing into rarely played songs, the set list Tuesday looked built to please: It came almost entirely from the band's first five records, the band's hits and standards. The thrill lay in the cohesion and pacing, on the large and small levels. Jam-band audiences love to analyze set lists for sequencing and repertory, but it's not always about minutiae - how many times song X has been played, and how many times before song Y. It's about architecture, and patterning, and symmetry.

The Allmans played three sets, which is the first and last thing anyone needs to know about Tuesday night. Not so much because such a thing has rarely happened, but because it made a bigger and better arc. The Allman Brothers know about arcs. An arc ran through the band's version of Elmore James's blues song 'The Sky Is Crying,' building through Mr. Trucks's solo until an apex in the third chorus. Another came in Mr. Haynes's solo during 'Whipping Post,' the concert's first encore: a steady build from eerily quiet to strafing loud, and then, with the band, a gradual relaxing before the final section. The concert as a whole arced through the second set and its middle, including 'Black Hearted Woman,' 'The Sky Is Crying' and 'Dreams.' This was where the band found its way toward its best stuff, enfolded improvisations and shifting densities, and where it kept applying pressure on the music, filling it with tension and drama. It wasn't playing for itself anymore.

Mr. Allman, singing and playing keyboards, didn't steal attention. The guitarists do so much of the work, cuing new sections and pushing toward the high points. But he is the soul and center, slightly muted, his blues-shouting voice deep in the center of the sound mix, his organ solos simple and resonant. Mr. Haynes sings lead in this band too, but Mr. Allman was the singer to wait for in ballads and spirituals - like 'Melissa' and 'Will the Circle Be Unbroken,' a recurring song through these final concerts, which took up about 10 minutes of Tuesday's third set. And, finally, his story and statistics eclipsed all others.

'Just a few years ago, I was called to come and meet these guys in Jacksonville, Fla.,' Mr. Allman said, by way of a closing speech. 'It was kind of a little stiff in the room, until one of them handed me a lyric sheet and said, 'Sing.' This was at about 3:30 in the afternoon, on March 26, 1969.'

He thanked the audience for its loyalty, then called for a version of the first song the band ever played together, 'Trouble No More' by Muddy Waters, the beginning brought back for the end, the final downstroke of the final arc.

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