Teacher He Disliked Drove Him Into a Hornist Nest : Jazz: Tony Guerrero says the only way he could escape class was to take music, and now his second recording is being released.

Tony Guerrero owes his current career as promising young fluegelhornist to a grade-school teacher he didn’t like.

“I’d do anything to get out of that class,” the 23-year-old Santa Ana native relates. “One day the music teacher came in and asked if anybody wanted to start taking music lessons once a week. I joined right there.”

What followed was anything but promising. Guerrero asked to play drums but was assigned a set of bongos instead. He requested a switch to trombone, but was given a trumpet. No matter; it was two weeks before the young initiate learned the difference between the two instruments.

Now, all this seems far away as the accomplished, largely self-taught instrumentalist and composer releases his second recording, “Different Places,” for Los Angeles-based Nova Records.

Bassist Brian Bromberg, who appears on the album and includes one of Guerrero’s tunes on his own recent release, “Magic Rain,” is a big fan of the fluegelhornist. “(Tony’s) a decent human being who’s also a great musician; dedicated, sincere. He’s not the kind of person that’s going to abuse his gifts. He’s young, and if he sets high enough goals for himself and defines what he needs to do to get there, he’ll become one of the leading voices on his instrument.”

The tunes on “Different Places,” all but one written by Guerrero, range from funky backbeat numbers to cool, soothing ballads, graced by its leader’s smooth, melodic fluegelhorn tones. One of the longer numbers, “Mangione,” is an unabashed tribute to both the playing and compositional style of Guerrero’s chief influence, fluegelhornist Chuck Mangione.

“Specifically, it was his song ‘Children of Sanchez’ that got me started,” he says. “I went out and got the album and started accumulating other Chuck Mangione albums. And I would listen to albums with people who worked with him. It was kind of like tunnel vision for a while; I just saw the Mangione thing. It was a long time before I got into be-bop and all the other possibilities of what jazz can be.”

Guerrero’s musical path continued to be rocky after his first experiences. He took private trumpet lessons, but, he says, “I never practiced like I should have. There’s a point in your childhood when you get really bored sitting there playing scales and just want to go out and learn how to play ‘Proud Mary’ or something. Needless to say, I made several trumpet teachers kind of mad.”

Guerrero’s early musical tastes ran to Kiss and Led Zeppelin. During his freshman year at Saddleback High School, Guerrero’s former music instructor from McFadden Middle School, Mark Takeuchi, enlisted Guerrero to help him establish a jazz band at Saddleback. Guerrero agreed, even though he wasn’t exactly sure at the time what jazz was. Takeuchi introduced him to jazz generally and Chuck Mangione specifically. “(Takeuchi’s) been a very inspirational guy to me,” says Guerrero. “He really opened me up to what passions in music are.”

But at the end of the year, Takeuchi left Santa Ana to take a job in Watsonville. Guerrero was determined to keep the school’s jazz band running. The school provided practice space but no money for buying music, according to the fluegelhornist. So he began to write out his own arrangements for the ensemble and now credits this experience with getting him started as a composer. Before long, Guerrero had formed his own band, and, minus his presence, the high-school jazz ensemble dissolved.

It was also during high school that Guerrero began to favor the fluegelhorn. “I started getting into it and feeling the difference,” he says. “I’ve never really pursued the lead or studio trumpet sound. I’d rather be known as something of a solo voice, and I think my voice is the fluegelhorn. It’s a bit more conducive to melodic playing. The trumpet is such a bright, brash instrument comparatively. I still do occasional things on trumpet, but most of the horn work I do is on the fluegel.”

Along with a lot of straight-ahead jazz, Guerrero has lately been listening to the Gipsy Kings, whose sound, he says, fits his own attitudes towards music. “It’s incredibly soulful and generally very simple. That’s something I’ve always tried to gear my own music towards: simplicity, or the less-is-more thing. Their melodies are simple, their harmonics are simple, yet it’s beautiful, beautiful music. There’s a lot of emotion coming from them.”

Guerrero’s band, featuring keyboardist Bill Cantos and saxophonist Gary Gould, now plays the occasional gig at Bon Appetit in Westwood and has appeared in concert at Cal State L.A., UCLA and Pepperdine College. On Sunday nights this month, he fronts a different group at Newport’s Cafe Lido, where he plays ballads and jazz standards like “Let’s Fall in Love” and Miles Davis’ “Milestones” as well as his own compositions.

The young fluegelhornist’s goals in life are simple. “I’d love to be able to afford to raise a family by scoring for films, cutting my own albums, and doing concerts, kind of that Quincy Jones thing. I’d just like to make a living doing what I love.”

Does he, when looking back, think Orange County was a good place for a budding musician to be?

“There’s really nothing for musicians in this area, and there was little support from my school district for a jazz band. There’s a couple of good colleges--Orange Coast College has a good program--and there’s really only one decent jazz club now that Just Like Perry’s (in Mission Viejo) has closed. There just doesn’t seem to be a lot of support for jazz out here,” he said.

“I think I got lucky.”

The Tony Guerrero Band plays Sunday at 8:30 p.m. at the Cafe Lido, 501 30th St., Newport Beach. Admission: free. Information: (714) 675-2968.