Siegel to Let Fly With Some Classic Blues : Music: Blues man credits Seiji Ozawa with pointing the way toward mixing with the symphonic sound.

A string quartet dances through a stately passage that sounds like something Haydn might have composed. But, as bent notes from a blues harmonica cut into the counterpoint and the cello begins riffing beneath it, it’s apparent this isn’t Haydn.

The piece, a section from Corky Siegel’s “Chamber Blues Suite,” to be performed Wednesday at the Irvine Barclay Theatre, is a hybrid of blues and classical forms, something Siegel has been pushing since the mid-1960s. Best known for his association with the Chicago-based Siegel-Schwall blues band, Siegel may be the only guy who has recorded for both the Alligator and Deutsche Grammophon record labels. His life as a blues musician took a radical turn in 1966 when Seiji Ozawa, then music director of the Chicago Symphony’s summer Ravinia Festival, walked into the North Chicago club where he was playing.

“I remember him saying something about how he used to play piano, but his chops weren’t really in shape,” Siegel explained last week during an interview at UCLA. “But he said he’d like to jam with us sometime and have our band jam with his band--which was the Chicago Symphony.”

Ozawa suggested that Siegel work with William Russo, the composer who had written experimental music for Stan Kenton’s orchestra in the ‘50s as well as a symphony, “The Titans.” The two, who had met while Siegel was attending Chicago’s Roosevelt University, collaborated on “Three Pieces for Blues Band and Orchestra,” which the blues man premiered with the Ozawa and the Chicago Symphony in 1968. Another Russo-Siegel collaboration, “Symphonic Blues,” with Ozawa and the San Francisco Symphony, was released in 1971 and went on to win the French Grand Prix du Disque award. Siegel’s career as a crossover musician was on its way.

He credits Ozawa with pointing the way. “He literally had everything to do with this, sticking his neck out, taking all the risks. There he was, this classical conductor, and he thought this blending of blues and symphonic music was really a lasting form. I just had this blues band. I was just going along with it.”

Siegel’s exposure to classical music had been minimal. He had heard “Peter and the Wolf” and “The Grand Canyon Suite” around the house while growing up but says he never heard a symphony orchestra perform live until his collaboration with Ozawa.

Though his composition for Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops, “Street Music,” was written in 1975, “it wasn’t until 1984 that I really fell in love with the form. I had never composed anything in my life. It had just been a blues band sitting around figuring our arrangements, that was the extent of my writing.”

This lack of experience may make the process of composing more tedious for Siegel--”I’ll work on three measures for weeks,” he confesses--but it doesn’t detract from the results. One of the pieces in the suite, with Siegel at the keyboard, has the dignity of piano concertos composed 200-plus years ago. Another is left to just the string quartet. But the most interesting feature Siegel’s slippery harmonica work and the way he blends blues and classical styles.

“I don’t consider myself a classical player at all,” he said. “I just try to find ways of working in what I do into the classical format. Since I’m the composer, it makes it easier for me to do because I know how I play. I just don’t have the technique to whip off classical music. I’m a blues player. I’m limited to that technique.

“It’s as if one of the early composers, like Mozart, had known about the blues and incorporated it into his music. The possibilities for exploration of these two forms, which I really felt are made for each other, are just infinite.”

Improvisation also plays a role in the pieces. “A lot of the writing is done to sound improvised. Most of what I do (on harmonica) is improvised. And some of what the string quartet does is improvised. Classical musicians don’t think they can improvise because they don’t know what improvisation is. But when they find out, they can do it. You can’t just say, ‘I’m going to improvise now.’ You have to have some things in your memory, a bag of licks, something your fingers know how to do, that works in certain situations.”

Siegel, who is now working on a piece commissioned by the Grant Park Symphony in Chicago and who still makes appearances occasionally with the Siegel-Schwall Band, is eager to go back and round out his classical musical background.

“I intend at some time to study the great composers. When I first started out, there may have been an ego thing that prevented me from listening so I wouldn’t be influenced by them. Now I see the great value of going out and studying Mozart’s music, but I haven’t done it yet. I figure that I can just write from this innocent place. Maybe that will give my music more value.”

Corky Siegel and the Consortium String Quartet appear tonight at 8 at the Irvine Barclay Theatre, 4242 Campus Drive, Irvine. Tickets: $12 to $15. Information: (714) 854-4646. Also Saturday at UCLA’s Wadsworth Theatre, Veterans Administration Grounds, Westwood. Information: (213) 825-9261.