Timeless All-Stars: Individual Careers With a Common Bond : Jazz: The collection of musicians with roots in Southern California will open the Pacific Jazz Festival Saturday. Their solo careers keep them busy, so bringing them together for a tour was not easy.

The Timeless All-Stars may have been the brainchild of a European record producer, but the group has its roots in Southern California. Central to this California connection is the long association of Harold Land and Bobby Hutcherson, who have been playing together here since the mid ‘60s.

The sextet--vibraphonist Hutcherson, tenor saxophonist Land, trombonist Curtis Fuller, pianist Cedar Walton, bassist Buster Williams and drummer Billy Higgins--will open the Pacific Jazz Festival on Saturday at the Pacific Amphitheatre in Costa Mesa, with pianist Billy Childs sitting in for Walton (who’s in Japan with his trio) and trombonist Julian Priester filling in for Fuller.

Land, 71, was born in Houston but grew up in San Diego. He’s best remembered for his association with the legendary Clifford Brown-Max Roach quartet that formed shortly after Land moved to Los Angeles in 1954.

“I was good friends with Eric Dolphy,” Land said recently from his home in Los Angeles, “and lots of musicians, too many to even recall, would come over to Eric’s parents’ house for jam sessions. Clifford brought Max over to one of those sessions, heard me and hired me for the group they were about to form.”

Hutcherson, 49, was born in Los Angeles and lived for many years in Pasadena. Probably the best-known vibist of his generation, Hutcherson has recorded with Eric Dolphy, Tony Williams, McCoy Tyner and Jackie McLean over the years, in addition to releasing a string of forward-looking albums under his own name for the Blue Note label beginning in the late ‘60s. It was during that period that he met Land.

“I had just come back from playing in New York, and I started working at this club in Los Angeles called Le Deuce,” Hutcherson said recently from his home in San Francisco. “Buster Williams was living in Los Angeles and he was playing bass, John Houston was on the piano. We worked there for a year straight.”

When it came time for Hutcherson to travel east to record for Blue Note at the Rudy Van Gelder studios in New Jersey, he took Land. The resulting albums, including “Total Eclipse,” “Now” and “Medina,” show Hutcherson moving outside, stretching the limits of the vibraphone while Land was working some of John Coltrane’s emotion into his highly personalized sound. The two began playing around New York with a band they co-led that featured, at various times, drummer Joe Chambers and a young Chick Corea on keyboards.

The two musicians’ association suffered when Hutcherson moved to San Francisco around 1970, but didn’t dissolve. During the ‘70s, Land traveled north to play with Hutcherson and keyboardist Todd Cochran. Land also appeared on Hutcherson’s now out-of-print recording “Head On,” which featured a double rhythm section and backup from a 35-piece orchestra.

The idea for the Timeless All-Stars came around 1980 from European record producer Wim Wigt whose Timeless label was recording Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, among others. The group toured Europe a couple times in the early ‘80s and recorded a pair of albums for the Netherlands-based company. Though Wigt and his label are no longer associated with the group, the name sticks. The band’s only American release “Essence,” a collection of originals contributed by the group’s various members, principally Cedar Walton, was recorded in 1986 for the Delos label.

“I love the air in Harold’s sound,” Hutcherson said, “the long breaths, that light, airy sound. We just worked together in Chicago a couple months ago. Every now and then we’ll go out and enjoy just the two of us playing together.”

In addition to praising Hutcherson, Land has kind words for the group’s drummer, Los Angeles-based Billy Higgins, who recently appeared in London with Land as part of pianist Walton’s current group. “I love playing with Billy, he’s the tastiest drummer I’ve had the pleasure to play with. He has huge ears and he’s very sympathetic about where you are moment to moment.”

The saxophonist also doesn’t regret making a permanent move to New York, as so many Southern California jazz artists have done over the years. “I prefer living on the West Coast. I have a tennis career that’s very important and play with people like (trumpeter) Oscar Brashear and (flutist) Hubert Laws. You can’t play every day there like you can here.”

Though it’s difficult, with their individual careers, to pull the group together, the Timeless All-Stars will spend six weeks this fall touring the United States, and their manager Lupe De Leon says he’s working on getting them another record deal. Until then, Saturday’s performance will give Orange County fans a chance to hear these all-stars and their timeless hard-bop approach.