Pianist Horace Tapscott Learned His Lessons Early in L.A. : Music: The keyboardist, composer and bandleader appears with his trio Friday at the Hyatt Newporter in Newport Beach as part of the hotel’s summer jazz series.

It was when he moved to Los Angeles in 1943 that Horace Tapscott, not yet 10 years old, realized that his mother wanted him to become a musician.

“We got into Union Station,” the 56-year-old pianist recalled, “and I was anxious to see where we’d be living. But before we went to the house, my mother took me to meet my new music teacher first. Can you imagine just getting into town and going right over to see the music teacher? That’s when I knew she was really serious.”

Tapscott, who appears with his trio Friday at the Hyatt Newporter as part of the hotel’s summer jazz series, had plenty of musical experience in his native Houston. He lived in a “shotgun house,” a dwelling so narrow that “you couldn’t help but play the piano every time you walked by it.” His mother played tuba in the church’s 17-piece orchestra, and local musicians, including Floyd Dixon, would come by the house. “In that kind of environment,” says the keyboardist, “you can see why I got interested in music.”

But it was in Los Angeles where that interest blossomed. He lived just down the street from the all-black musician’s union Local 47 (musician’s unions were segregated in Los Angeles until 1953), and it soon became the young Tapscott’s hangout.

Trumpeter, composer and bandleader Gerald Wilson “pulled me off the street when I was 14. He caught me coming home from school and asked if I could read music. I told him I could, so he took me inside. (Trombonist) Melba Liston was there and said, ‘Sit down here, young blood, and let’s see what you can do.’ But it became apparent that I couldn’t read as well as I thought I could and it was pretty embarrassing. After that, I didn’t tell anyone I could read until I really could.”

As a youth, Tapscott’s instrument of choice was the trombone--”It was so masculine,” he said--until dental problems caused by an auto accident made it too difficult to play. He attended Jefferson High School where his circle of friend’s included Don Cherry, Eric Dolphy, Frank Morgan and Lawrance Marable. It was there that he came under the tutelage of Dr. Samuel Browne, now a near-mythic figure in West Coast jazz lore, who influenced the careers of a number of musicians such as Dolphy and Cherry who went on to become big names. Tapscott says the most important lesson that Browne gave them didn’t deal with notes and technique.

“Samuel told us, ‘I’ll teach you if you promise to pass it on.’ ” And that’s exactly what Tapscott has done. Beginning with the founding of the Union of God’s Musicians and Artists Ascension organization in 1961, Tapscott has provided a forum for young musicians and composers with various editions of his Pan-African People’s Arkestra, a band that ranges from 20 to 30 and more pieces (“We have compositions for 75 pieces,” Tapscott said.) Respected players such as cornetist-composer Butch Morris, as well as saxophonists Arthur Blythe and David Murray, have all been members over the years, but only one recording of the group, “Flight 17” (on the Nimbus label), has been made.

One of the Arkestra’s stranger concerts occurred 25 years ago during the Watts riots. To get the music to the community, Tapscott and the band were playing, as they often did, from the back of a flatbed truck.

“We had 30 people with us, including dancers, singers and poets,” Tapscott said. “Kids were dancing in the street. This was the first day of the so-called riots and the police pulled up with their guns drawn and made us stop. I’ll never forget that.”

Today, the keyboardist, composer and bandleader can see the efforts of five decades paying off. The Swiss Hat Hut record label will soon release two volumes of live trio performances with Tapscott, bassist Cecil McBee and drummer Andrew Cyrille, recorded last December in Los Angeles at Catalina Bar & Grill.

Tapscott tours Europe frequently and earlier this year led a 20-piece orchestra at the Ultra Music Meeting, an alternative music festival held in Helsinki. And Nimbus Records, the label--now based in Amsterdam--that Tapscott helped established, will soon offer an ’86 session that the pianist recorded in New York with respected bassist Fred Hopkins and drummer Ben Riley. Over the years, Nimbus has released seven of the keyboardist’s solo and group recordings under the title “The Tapscott Sessions.”

The tall, imperially slim keyboardist sees jazz as America’s classical music, and snatches of Thelonious Monk, Art Tatum and Cecil Taylor can be heard in his work. But his involved, sometimes-rollicking, sometimes-pensive style is very much his own. Tapscott compositions are often inspired by friends and colleagues (“Sketches of Drunken Mary,” “Lino’s Pad”) and he also champions music written by locally based composers (“One For Lately,” trombonist Thurman Green’s tribute to fellow trombonist Lester Robertson).

“I was lucky that older musicians took me by the hand and pointed me in the right direction,” the self-effacing pianist said. “And I’ve been happy to do the same.”