An Art Form Born in the U.S.A. Goes Global : Jazz: Once considered uniquely American, the music ‘is now an international language,’ says reedman Bob Wilber.

“Jazz,” Bob Wilber said between sets at the annual San Diego Jazz Party Saturday night, “is now an international language. It’s no longer an American monopoly.”

Wilber, who is 61, was born and raised in Scarsdale, N.Y., but he and his wife, singer Joanne Horton, now make their home in the English countryside, in the ancient Cotswold market town of Chipping Campden.

When he was 17, Wilber studied with Sidney Bechet, who practically invented the soprano saxophone as a jazz instrument. Now Wilber himself takes the occasional student, to pass along the kind of wisdom that can only be taught hand-to-hand. One of his proteges, a Finn named Antti Sarpila, began studying with Wilber when he was 16. He is now 28 and, Wilber says, a world-class clarinet, tenor and soprano man. An English student, Nick Peyton, shows similar progress, modeling himself on Johnny Hodges.

The choice of model is itself interesting. As recently as 10 years ago, Wilber thinks, you wouldn’t have found young players aspiring to the mainstream jazz sound of, say, Hodges, Bechet or Wilber himself, in which lyrical virtuosity and melodic improvisation are the hallmarks.

John Coltrane and later men like Wayne Shorter have pushed the soprano sax in other directions, hard-driving and progressive. Wilber, politely enough, says thanks but no thanks. He remains, as in his days at Eddie Condon’s, with Tony Bennett and Bobby Hackett, and with the World’s Greatest Jazz Band, an advocate of the free-flowing and scenic mainstream.

From his home base in the countryside, Wilber concertizes at London’s Royal Festival Hall with a big band, and recently performed Duke Ellington’s “The Queen’s Suite” there, a concert taped by Channel 4 for a program he expects will eventually be broadcast here as well.

He makes three or four trips a year to this country for concerts, festivals and jazz parties like the one Bill Muchnic founded in San Diego in 1988. Muchnic died of leukemia last fall but Muchnic’s widow, Beverly, elected to keep the party going and it was a sold-out success with more than 500 badge-buyers on hand.

The players included pianists Paul Smith, Ralph Sutton and Dick Hyman, bassists Milt Hinton and Bob Haggart, cornetists Ed Polcer, Randy Sandke and Spanky Davis, trombonists Al Grey and George Masso, sax men Plas Johnson, Flip Phillips, Marshall Royal and Tommy Newsom and drummers Butch Miles and Gus Johnson.

A jazz party is like an anthology or a box of assorted chocolates; some items will be even more pleasing than others. For the Saturday night session Wilber organized some of the party’s all-stars, augmented by four San Diego sidemen, into a 16-piece band. With only one two-hour rehearsal, the band played old Benny Goodman charts, including “Don’t Be That Way” and “Jumping at the Woodside,” along with some of Wilber’s own swinging arrangements, all with a propulsive polish that suggested they’d been together for months.

Among Wilber’s own arrangements was a beautiful piece, with Ellingtonian colors, called “Early Morning Blues,” and another based on the main theme of Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet and featuring a five-clarinet choir. (Wilber calls it “Mostly Mozart.”) His wife sang a little-known Billy Strayhorn song called “A Flower Is a Lovesome Thing.”

On Friday night, Wilber and clarinetist Kenny Davern did a reprise of their so-called soprano summit, a hit at the 1989 party. The lyrical entwinings of Wilber’s soprano and Davern’s clarinet, and then of the two clarinets, were renewed evidence that jazz can gallop and be gorgeous, all at the same time.

The prevailing jazz party taste is undoubtedly for the no-holds-barred, rideout finish on the good old standards. And yet another highlight of the San Diego gathering was the set by the Howard Alden-Dan Barrett Quintet. Guitarist Alden and trombonist Barrett, both Californians now living in New York and both still in their 30s, performed tightly arranged pieces with alto sax (Chuck Wilson), bass (Jay Leonhart) and drums (Jackie Williams). The sound carried echoes of the John Kirby Quintet of yesteryear, brisk, cool, imaginative.

There were large windows for improvisation, and it made for some extraordinarily fine chamber jazz, as on “920 Special.” Trumpeter Buck Clayton, no longer playing, has done several arrangements for the quintet which played one of them, “Winter Light.” The choral voicing of guitar, trombone and alto was both piquant and melancholy, and oddly refreshing.

From the San Diego bash, Bob Wilber was off to other festival gigs in this country and then on a world tour that will include Southeast Asia. If jazz is no longer an American monopoly, it is, like the movies, a very popular export.