CHRISTOPHER HOLLYDAY : Emotion Pours Out When He’s Playing

Alto saxophonist Christopher Hollyday has a unique term to describe his music: liquid personality .

“It’s very important for me to dig down deep and get to the point where I’m singing on my saxophone,” says the 21-year-old musician, who appears Tuesday through next Sunday at Catalina Bar & Grill in Hollywood.

“That way, what I’m playing becomes more of a story about what’s happening in my life via my emotions and the part of me that’s the dream side. I think it’s all in there in the music.”

Hollyday, a hard-driving, technically commanding soloist with a penetrating tone, is another youthful jazzman who is creating a stir. His acoustic-based style, though often intense and edgy, does have its soft spots. In some ways, this multidimensional approach could be likened to the way an actor portrays a role.

“It’s about conversation, told with our music, which is our language,” says Hollyday, whose third Novus/RCA album, “The Natural Moment,” has been on the Billboard jazz charts for two months. “You have to learn how other people react to you, and you to them, how you can trigger something in them. The whole piece is about our music and our emotions telling that story, which is lyrical but has no lyrics.”

Hollyday calls himself a “be-bop” saxophonist, which he says means he’s simply a “modern jazz musician,” so it’s not unusual that he names Charlie Parker as a primary influence.

“He was so authoritative, so confident, and his tone grabbed me,” says Hollyday, who picked up the alto at age 9 and by age 13 was a professional, working three or four nights a month in and around his native Boston.

But Hollyday’s other major influence was not an instrumentalist, but a singer: Ray Charles.

“What impresses me about Ray,” Hollyday says, “is both the way he sings, meaning his intensity, and the way that he interprets. He can sing jazz, R&B;, country and Western, disco and continue to be himself in all those mediums.”

Influences aside, Hollyday is determined, like Charles, to be himself. Practicing is a key to that goal, he says.

“A lot of people get to a certain point where they play OK, and they say, ‘Well, I’ve got it. I don’t need to work so hard,’ ” he says. “When that happens, you stop growing.”