Youthful Musician Adds Sound Signature to Work

First there were Bird and Prez and Diz, and now it seems likely that Goose will be added to that list. At 20, long-necked Christopher Hollyday has already recorded five albums and is considered one of the hottest of a new generation of be-bop players also including Roy Hargrove, Marcus Roberts and Joey DeFrancesco.

Hollyday, who will play Elario’s on Saturday and Sunday nights with his quartet, has been compared with alto master Jackie McLean, but he doesn’t hear himself that way.

“Some people think we had a lot to do with each other, but that’s not the case. Maybe I sounded like him when I was younger, but I don’t think I do anymore.”

In his teens, Hollyday made two albums on his own label with his older brother, Richard, a trumpeter. At 18, he recorded a third with pianist Cedar Walton, drummer Billy Higgins and bassist Ron Carter before signing with Novus. “On Course,” his second album for the label, was released in May, and most critics agree it marks a quantum leap from his previous work.

For one thing, all of the songs were written by Hollyday, whereas “Christopher Hollyday,” his first Novus album, featured covers of bop standards. For another, he is finding his own sound, fuller and more authoritative than it was only a year ago.

Hollyday grew up around jazz in Norwood, Mass., a suburb of Boston. His father a former drummer who spun a steady supply of Ellington, Brubeck, Blakey, Parker, Gillespie and other greats on the family hi-fi. At age 12, Hollyday was already committed to a career in jazz.

“I knew it when I started telling my friends I was going to stay in and practice, and then I started playing clubs.” Hollyday played his first dates at a Boston jazz club at 13, and at 15 he was sitting in with Boston drummer Alan Dawson and the major jazz greats who played the club when they came to town.

Hollyday doesn’t find his early success all that surprising.

“I think a lot of jazz artists got a lot of acclaim at 18 or 19. Young jazz musicians have always been around, they just come and go in waves.”

Although at the moment Hollyday sticks with straight-ahead acoustic be-bop, he has broad musical interests.

“I probably haven’t listened to anything but Prince in the last week or so,” he confessed. “I like Madonna. There’s not much music I don’t like.”

Don’t be surprised if Hollyday plays a pop session some day, in the same way young jazz saxman Branford Marsalis recorded with Sting.

“I feel that I can do that. What I’m striving for, musically speaking, is to go after the sounds that I hear, any kind of music, any kind of beat, and it will still be Christopher Hollyday music. I could see myself doing many kinds of things.”

Hollyday’s San Diego dates are part of a U.S. tour that stops Friday night at the Monterey Jazz Festival and heads toward the East Coast after San Diego. His band includes pianist Larry Goldings, bassist John Lockwood and drummer Ron Savage, the same musicians who joined him for “On Course.”

Saxophonist Buddy Collette, 69, laid some of the ground work for Hollyday and his youthful peers. Collette, who opened three nights at Elario’s Wednesday, has recorded with Erroll Garner, Stan Getz, Gerry Mulligan, Chico Hamilton and taught younger players like Sonny Criss and Eric Dolphy, all the while maintaining an active career as a studio musician for movies and television.

Collette is equally at home on tenor and alto saxes, flute and clarinet. His newest album is “Flute Talk,” with fellow flutist James Newton, and he plays on the title song for the Eddie Murphy movie, “Harlem Nights.” Collette will be joined by Larry Nash on piano, Richard Reid on bass and Mel Lee on drums.

Guitarist Tuck Andress anchors the pop/jazz duo Tuck and Patti with his fluid, sensuous guitar work. Their first album, “Tears of Joy,” stayed in the Top 10 on Billboard’s Contemporary Jazz chart for six months. The follow-up, last year’s “Love Warriors,” features a pair of originals by Patricia (Patti) Cathcart Andress, plus versions of songs ranging from Lennon and McCartney’s “Honey Pie” to Jimi Hendrix’s “Castles Made of Sand/Little Wing.”

A spokeswoman for Windham Hill Jazz, a branch of the new age-oriented Windham Hill, said Tuck and Patti are the jazz label’s best-selling artists, with both albums topping 100,000. The duo plays one show at 7:30 Sunday night, opening for Ladysmith Black Mambazo at Humphrey’s Concerts by the Bay.

RIFFS: KSDS-FM’s (88.3) “Le Jazz Club” features pianist Monty Alexander’s Sextet in a tribute to Nat King Cole on Sunday night at 7, with former Cole guitarist John Collins. Monday at 3 p.m. on KSDS, Barry Farrar interviews drummer Ralph Peterson on “Percussive Profiles.” And next Thursday morning at 11, Tony Sisti interviews pianist Michel Camilo, who opens five nights at Elario’s a day earlier. . . .

Saxophonist Hollis Gentry plays the “Jazz Trax” night next Wednesday at the Catamaran in Pacific Beach. . . .

Flutist Holly Hofmann and guitarist Mundell Lowe team up to explain the elements of jazz Sunday night at 7 in Chamberlain Hall on National University’s Mission Valley campus. The event is called “The Jazz Bag.” Hofmann and Lowe will mix playing with discussions of the rhythms, harmonies and improvisational techniques that go into jazz. . . .

Friday night Lowe teams up with his wife, former Big Band singer Betty Bennett, for an evening of music in the Palace Bar at the Horton Grand Hotel downtown; Saturday night, the hotel offers more jazz with Ronn Satterfield and Tripp Sprague. . . .

Guitarist Peter Sprague and flutist Steve Kujala pair up Saturday night at 8 at Words & Music bookstore in Hillcrest. . . .

Guitarist Laurindo Almeida is featured on KPBS-TV’s “Club Date” jazz program Saturday night at 8:30, preceded at 8 by a 1957 “Nat King Cole Show” featuring Harry Belafonte.