THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS FOR RICHARD STOLTZMAN

Richard Stoltzman, who has been called “an artist of indescribable genius” (Washington Post), “a classical superstar” (New York Times) and “the greatest clarinetist of the century” (San Francisco Chronicle), was totally in awe of the late Benny Goodman.

Stoltzman’s respect for jazz musicians is not really surprising. The son of a railroad man who played saxophone gigs on weekends, he himself played Dixieland while a student at Ohio State University.

“When I was a little kid,” Stoltzman, 43, recalls, “my dad would stand in the kitchen for hours playing these Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster and Lester Young licks. I grew up learning all the jazz and pop standard tunes, and hearing great artists like Lester, Miles, Clifford Brown, Bill Evans, John Coltrane.”

In an ironic twist on the conventional movie-script situation, Stoltzman’s jazz loving father had reservations about his son’s taking up classical music professionally. “He never discouraged me, but he just didn’t think classical music was a logical pursuit except as an avocation.”

The turning point for Stoltzman was a scholarship for a master’s degree in music at Yale. While there, he began a 10-year association with the Marlboro Music Festival in Vermont. It was there that he met the pianist Peter Serkin; in 1973, they formed the chamber group Tashi. Stoltzman went on to win various awards, including a Grammy for best chamber music performance, and gave the first solo clarinet recital ever performed in Carnegie Hall. The concert was dedicated to Benny Goodman, who was present, and whom Stoltzman called “the first man to perform American jazz and European classical music with equal artistic quality.”

The concert ended with a medley entitled “A Tribute to Benny,” parts of which were written by pianist Bill Douglas and by another pianist-composer, Mel Powell, who as a young man was Goodman’s pianist.

“It was through Peter Serkin that I had met Benny,” Stoltzman says. “His father (Rudolf Serkin) had gotten Peter and Benny together so that Peter could learn some of the clarinet repertoire. Benny had heard about our Tashi group; this piqued his curiosity and he asked Peter if I could come over and see him.

“The first time I went over to his apartment, it was just to meet him--that was exciting enough in itself. Another time, I brought my friend Bill Douglas, and we played and improvised for him. He stopped us in the middle and said, ‘What are you guys doing?’ I said, ‘We’re improvising, Mr. Goodman,’ and he said, ‘Well, that sounds like Brahms or something.’ I decided to take it as a compliment, though of course it was not his style of improvising.

“I imagined him to be above all this business of reeds and mouthpieces, but he was really curious about what kind of mouthpiece I used, what reeds. Then he brought out a bunch of these old ‘spaghetti duets’--clarinet duet pieces by Italian composers like Gambini--and we’d play until he ran out of breath. I’d say, ‘Don’t you want to stop?,’ and he’d say ‘No, no, let’s keep going!’ ”

As Stoltzman’s reputation grew, so did his repertoire. He is intrigued by the work of Thelonious Monk and has performed Monk segments at some of his concerts, along with the virtuoso jazz bassist Eddie Gomez. “Blue Monk” is heard in his latest RCA Red Seal release, “Begin Sweet World,” in which he is accompanied by Douglas, Gomez and synthesizer expert Jeremy Wall (RCA AMLI 7124).

A year ago, Clare Fischer arranged a Duke Ellington medley for him. “It’s really much more than an arrangement. Clare created almost a symphonic work out of the tunes by Ellington and Billy Strayhorn. Clare is a greatly underrated writer. He also wrote a big-band piece for me, which I played with the UCLA band a few weeks ago, with Clare himself conducting.”

Last January, Stoltzman took part, along with Gomez, Chick Corea and Keith Jarrett, in the Music Joy Festival held in Tokyo. Last May, Joe Williams sang and Stoltzman played “Mood Indigo” in the opening concert of the Boston Pops season.

What may turn out to be the most significant of all his jazz associations involves Woody Herman and his orchestra. They played a series of concerts together last year and will reunite in Herman’s July 19 commemorative at the Hollywood Bowl, celebrating his 50th anniversary as a bandleader.

“My main reason for working with Woody,” he says, “was that he wanted to revive the ‘Ebony Concerto,’ which Stravinsky wrote for him in 1946. Woody also had his ex-pianist, John Oddo, write a piece for me. I brought in an adaptation I had of Debussy’s ‘Maid With the Flaxen Hair,’ and Woody already had in his book Copland’s ‘Fanfare for the Common Man’ and Faure’s ‘Pavane,’ which had slots in them where anyone could play, so I joined in on those.

“The Stravinsky, which we’ll do at the Bowl, is not as easy a piece as I would have imagined, but it’s still Stravinsky. It’s like a Picasso impression of something.”

Talking to Stoltzman about jazz is a refreshing experience; in sharp contrast to the condescension shown by so many classical musicians toward jazzmen, he is totally respectful and even acknowledges being nervous in their presence. He is, of course, one in a long line of artists who have divided their time between the two worlds, from Benny Goodman and Mel Powell to Andre Previn, Chick Corea, Wynton Marsalis and a growing number of others.

Expressing the hope that the barriers are breaking down, Stoltzman feels that too few classical musicians understand the serious disciplines jazz requires of its artists. “Jazz is very difficult for them to play, but also to listen to. I’m married to a wonderful violinist who was totally trained in the conservatory tradition. She’s a beautiful musician, but after we’d been married about six months I realized that she didn’t know anything about standard tunes, which I assumed everyone knew. She didn’t know the changes, the bridges--nothing, zero! We talked about it, and she decided to buy a book of big-band music.

“It just isn’t that simple to appreciate jazz; it takes a little work. A lot of musicians I hang out with in the classical world live lives that are totally caught up in that, and they don’t know anything outside it.

“This new album of mine, for instance--I played some of it for a classical pianist I work with and he just said, ‘I don’t understand it.’ He could relate to the Bach ‘Air’ and the Faure ‘Pie Jesu,’ but when it got into some other things it seemed to him not to be music, so rather than get utterly depressed, I took the record off.”

The album, which includes six originals by Bill Douglas as well as “Blue Monk” and “Amazing Grace,” is dedicated “to my Mom (and mothers everywhere) because she loves this record and finally has an album she can give to all her friends,” and “to my Dad’s memory--he would have loved ‘Amazing Grace’ and Eddie Gomez’s soulful bass.”

He is grateful to men like Chick Corea for being supportive. “When you’ve listened to great players like that on records for 10, 15 years, and you’re on the same stage, you feel like ‘What in the world am I doing here?’ But on that concert in Tokyo, we did a Japanese waltz that Chick wrote, and ‘Someday My Prince Will Come’ and ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and a couple of Monk pieces. Chick paid me a real compliment. He said, ‘Hey, you don’t play bad for somebody in a tuxedo!’ ”