Sprague Stokes His Jazz Fires : Music: After working with successful band Braziljazz, guitarist Peter Sprague is now reviving his solo career.

Guitarist Peter Sprague owns a comfortable home in Del Mar, but when he wants to write music or bed down for the night, he retreats to a tiny, gnomish cabin in his back yard.

Sprague is an ambitious, driven artist, but his amenable, soft-spoken demeanor, latter-day hippie outlook (he’s a vegetarian and longtime surfer) and preference for shaggy locks and bare feet temper this drive into a calm, unselfish force. His rustic escape hatch, with its steep shingle roof and arched, hobbit-like doorway, says a lot about a musician who has settled on a direction after years of dancing to others’ drummers.

In the same way that Sprague shuts out the chaos of modern life in his cabin, he has gradually withdrawn from the hype of the music business in Los Angeles, where he lived only briefly (in 1986).

He has also loosened his bonds to the rising pop jazz band Braziljazz, whose debut album--prominently featuring Sprague’s guitar--is gaining critical acclaim and radio play.

For the 36-year-old Sprague, 1991 marked an especially vital period of transition.

Last spring, with Braziljazz’s debut release pending, he developed tendinitis in his right index finger, which is essential to his intricate finger-picking style. Along the way, he found time to marry his girlfriend, Stefanie, last summer. As fate would have it, she’s a hand therapist.

While he was recuperating during the summer, his partners in Braziljazz--vocalist Kevyn Lettau and percussionist Mike Shapiro--added two other musicians to round out the group as they geared up to tour.

As a trio, Braziljazz had been an extremely roomy and comfortable vehicle for Sprague, who served as the group’s instrumental centerpiece. But, with his finger recovered enough that he could resume live performing in November, Lettau and Shapiro retained the expanded-group format, and Sprague wasn’t comfortable with the larger setting.

“I’m just a real staunch person for doing music I want to do,” he said. “As soon as it started looking like I was going to be playing pop jazz, I decided to move on.” He may make a second Braziljazz recording but does not plan to tour with the group.

Instead, he is concentrating on his own music played by his own group, with brother Tripp on woodwinds, plus bassist Kevin Hennessy and drummer Duncan Moore. Sprague will enter a studio early next year to make a new solo recording, his first in four years.

In preparation, he spends most days holed up in his home studio, writing or recording new songs with the band, sweetening these recordings with an array of sounds he adds using a guitar synthesizer.

Sprague also continues what has been his bread-and-butter work for many years: arranging and transcribing music for keyboard player and prolific composer Chick Corea. Sprague has transcribed four songbooks worth of music by Corea’s Elektric Band and also plans to publish a volume of transcribed Corea solos. Sprague is also rearranging Corea’s song “Spain” for a GRP Records all-star album (on which neither Sprague nor Corea will play).

As a budding jazz player, Sprague idolized Corea for years, sending him letters and tapes of his guitar playing. He finally got the keyboard wizard’s attention in 1983 with a tape of Corea’s songs, performed on solo guitar. Sprague played live with Corea a few times in 1984 and 1985, but when Corea formed his Elektric Band in 1985, he recruited guitarist Scott Henderson--much to Sprague’s disappointment.

“That was a pretty devastating moment, to not get in that band,” Sprague said, relaxing in his studio with his guitar in his lap, surrounded by banks of amplifiers, speakers, his Macintosh computer and other electronic equipment. “I felt it was pretty magical, but Chick wanted to lean more toward an electric style.”

It was Sprague’s work as a transcriber and composer that led him to begin using a Macintosh as a musical tool a few years ago. Now a newer, high-powered Mac has become a centerpiece of his home studio.

Using musical software, Sprague plays a musical part into his computer using a guitar, and notes instantly appear on the screen. He can then edit each composition one note at a time, altering whichever ones he wants to. This process proves especially useful for tasks such as rearranging “Spain,” with its 13 musical parts.

Sprague has yet to crack the national commercial radio and recording market in a big way, but he has already produced a sizable recorded legacy--about 30 albums, including six as a leader--and his playing continues to evolve. With his preference for acoustic guitar and his fluid Brazilian-tinged, finger-picked style, Sprague is developing a voice of his own, similar in spirit to fellow guitarist Pat Metheny.

Although Sprague began his jazz career in his teens admiring Wes Montgomery and playing straight-ahead jazz, his musical inclinations have moved steadily away from jazz’s mainstream.

He said he finds himself returning to the music he grew up with--mainly folkies such as James Taylor and Crosby, Stills & Nash, who produced rich, lyrical guitar-vocal albums. Among Sprague’s tremendous body of original material, which fills a thick binder, is a song called “Taylor Made,” a tribute to James Taylor. And as Sprague ran down the chords to another new song, he explained how his fingerings created a deep, resonant sound reminiscent of vintage Crosby, Stills & Nash.

It seems slightly incongruous, this masterful jazz guitarist sitting in a room packed with electronic gear, telling you he admires folk-rock singers. But the truth is, both Taylor and Crosby, Stills & Nash relied on rich harmonies and painstaking attention to studio details, and Sprague carries these priorities into his jazz.

He likes the pure sound of acoustic guitar but has no qualms about using guitar synthesizer and subtle electronic effects to bring glossy depth to his songs.

But his desire for a polished, studio-enhanced sound doesn’t mean he has no use for adrenaline-fed, impromptu jazz.

“It’s such a fickle business, the whole world of making records, that it takes a while to figure things out,” Sprague said. “Something I figured out is that what goes on records is not what you play live. I’ve seen people play stuff from their ‘Lites Out’ records live and the music is dead. There’s no fire, no improvisation, no creative energy. There are two realities you have to play to. You have to put something on recordings that will get played on the radio, but when you go to play live, you have to create that fire.”

Sprague’s jazz fires were stoked early. His dad, writer and amateur bongo player Hall Sprague, was a jazz buff. His son still remembers hearing Miles Davis’ “Kind of Blue” album in 1959 and, during the early 1960s, the Brazilian collaborations between Stan Getz and Joao Gilberto.

Sprague got his first guitar when he was 12--”one of those Tijuana things with strings 5 miles off the neck. I never was serious, because I was more into surfing.”

But at San Dieguito High School in Encinitas during the 1970s he became a member of a dedicated jazz brat pack that also included his brother Tripp, bassist John Leftwich and pianist Rob Schneiderman, a well-known player who now lives in New York.

Sprague recorded his first solo album in 1979 for the small, New York-based Xanadu label. It was called “Dance of the Universe” and also featured three San Diego jazz players with national reputations: pianist Mike Wofford, drummer Jim Plank and bassist Bob Magnusson.

Sprague recorded four albums for Xanadu before he signed with Concord Jazz for two albums, the 1985 “Musica Del Mar” and “Napali Coast.” The 1990 recording “Heads Hands Hearts,” a warm, acoustic collection under flutist Steve Kujala’s name, continues the lilting, tropical spirit of “Napali Coast,” while the new Braziljazz release has an inviting, sometimes fiery Brazilian feel.

But he believes he has finally settled on an artistic direction and philosophy of his own.

“The core of my band is these four acoustic instruments (guitar, woodwinds, bass and drums), but we’ll use synthesizers to color things up a bit,” he said. “The general feel and style of the tunes will be those kinds of Brazil-ish tunes like I played on ‘Napali Coast’ and ‘Heads Hands Hearts,’ and maybe a few distorted guitar solos.”

But sweetening the mix with synthesizers doesn’t mean Sprague is consciously going commercial. Over the years, he has put the hard-driving, star-making music industry mentality behind him.

“I think about breaking through to a larger audience. But I was having dinner with some artist friends the other night, and one of them came out with something really potent and we all got blown away. It was the thought that so much of the time we think that when we get there, get a hit record, that’s the goal.

“But the real trip is the ride along the way. I would love to have all that great stuff happen, but I sure am enjoying this whole adventure of it, writing new music, recording at my house, rehearsing the band, learning new tunes.”

Sprague’s next live performances in San Diego will be Jan. 24-26 at the Jazz Note in Pacific Beach (above Diego’s restaurant), where he will appear with his band.