Reunion of Giants Comes to Pass : Jazz: Pianist George Shearing and the guitarist will play together with blues singer Joe Williams at Performing Arts Center.

Joe Pass and George Shearing go back about 25 years. The guitarist was still a relative unknown, “doing studio work and playing around L.A.--getting started again,” he says, when he joined Shearing’s combo in the mid-’60s. The exposure he received touring with the pianist helped him gain a wider audience.

The two musicians will reunite in the company of singer Joe Williams tonight at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, Friday at Citrus College in Glendora and Sunday at UCLA’s Royce Hall, in a program billed “A Gathering of Friends.” The triumvirate of jazz giants will perform individual sets before joining in a group performance. Pass says the billing, especially in Shearing’s case, is appropriate.

“We are friends,” the guitarist said by phone earlier this week from a hotel room in Muskegon, Mich., one of the early stops on the current tour. “I know his wife and all that. We played together in the ‘60s, and I’ve done several concerts with him since then, at the Ambassador Auditorium (in Pasadena), at the Toronto Jazz Festival, at the Blue Note in New York. He’s really a great musician, not just a piano player. He understands harmonies better than most people who play the piano. He’s a fantastic player, disciplined, just great.”

Pass has less experience with Williams. “I’ve been on some programs with him, but not where we appeared together. I remember doing a studio date with him once in the ‘60s. He’s a unique stylist. He can really sing a ballad, though he’s more noted for the blues. He’s a great ballad singer.”

The guitarist has loads of experience playing with big names. Since his association with Norman Granz’s Pablo label began in the early ‘70s, he has recorded or appeared with Oscar Peterson, Ella Fitzgerald, Milt Jackson, Herb Ellis, Count Basie, Duke Ellington and a host of others. He says some flexibility is required in playing with musicians the caliber of Shearing or longtime associate Peterson.

“I try to fit in with whom I’m playing, harmonically, rhythmically and energy-wise. There’s a difference in the energy that different players put out--pianists and drummers especially. So I adapt, I don’t just try to force what I know or play on to the situation. I think it’s natural that you listen to one another. That’s the key ingredient when you’re just improvising off the top of your head and you’re not playing rehearsed material or anything.”

Despite the star-studded collaborations, Pass is probably best known for his solo work. His 1973 recording, “Virtuoso,” his first for Pablo, established a worldwide reputation for the guitarist as a clean-toned interpreter of standards with a formidable talent for swing and improvisation. “It wasn’t my idea to call it that,” the modest Pass said of the album’s title. “I mean ‘Virtuoso’--I don’t even like to say the word.”

The recording’s warmth and spontaneity, the guitarist said, are due to the fact that he came into the studio without any preconceived notion of what he would play. “The producer was there, and he’d say, ‘How about playing “How High the Moon” or “Stella by Starlight”?’ They’re throwing tunes at me and I’m thinking to myself, ‘Hey, wait a minute. We can play a ballad, OK, but some of these tunes are up-tempo and what am I going to do with them? But I did it all in one day and didn’t even listen to it for eight or nine months because I didn’t think it was very good at all.”

The release of Pass’ current album, “Summer Nights,” also marks a 25th anniversary of sorts. For the new recording, Pass reassembled the quartet (guitarist John Pisano, bassist Jim Hughart, drummer Colin Bailey and Pass) that recorded his 1964 tribute to guitarist Django Reinhardt, “For Django.”

“That album, so I hear, became a collector’s item,” said Pass. “So I decided to get the four of us together again after 25 years. And they were all around. We recorded some of the more obscure Django tunes for the album, but it’s not all Django.”

Pass, who was born in New Brunswick, N.J., in 1929 and who now lives in the San Fernando Valley, credits his father with giving him the encouragement and discipline required to attain proficiency on his instrument of choice. “He gave me a lot of push. Yeah, you might call it encouragement now, but at the time I thought it was being pretty tough. ‘Practice, practice, practice. Don’t play ball, don’t ride bikes.’ He was not a musician, but he was tough. He was like most immigrant fathers that want to see their children get ahead. And, in the end, I guess he knew. I’ve been lucky that I’ve been able to do this all my life, surviving and make a living.”