Gentry Be-Bops Between Two Jazz Styles : * Performance: The saxophonist, who appears tonight at El Matador, plays both traditional tunes and fusion.

There’s a philosophical Super Bowl going on inside the tall, lanky saxophonist Hollis Gentry.

On one side of the musical 50-yard line is fusion, that oft-maligned melange of jazz, funk, pop, Latin, reggae and other genres.

On the other is be-bop, or traditional jazz, that Gentry also loves to play.

So far, the contest is a draw.

Gentry displays his affinity for contemporary jazz with his band, Neon, and in collaboration with other artists including pianist David Benoit. His mainstream jazz side is satisfied when he appears with his Acoustic Quartet and performs pop standards and jazz classics.

This empathetic relationship seems a natural for Gentry, 37, who grew up in the ‘60s listening to a multitude of styles.

“My Dad played me Cannonball Adderley and Lou Rawls when I was about 13, and then later, I was listening to things like Coltrane’s ‘A Love Supreme’ (album) with my musician friends,” said Gentry, who plays tonight with bassist Luther Hughes at El Matador in Huntington Beach.

“But I was also listening to the R & B of the day, such as Parliament, Funkadelic and Motown,” Gentry said.

This taste for popular and more aesthetic forms finds its chief vehicle in the contemporary jazz mixture that Gentry delivers with Neon, whose self-titled debut album is on Nova Records. It’s also the side he’ll show tonight with Hughes, pianist Freddie Ravel and drummer David Derge.

“Fusion is a medium for musicians who consider themselves to be serious about expressing their diversity,” Gentry said. “It’s a way for me to personally represent all of my influences in one format.”

While some may call fusion the weak-spined sibling of mainstream jazz, Gentry points out that the form was established by jazz great Miles Davis, who ushered in the contemporary era with his breakthrough 1969 album, “Bitches Brew.”

“That concept of bringing be-bop trumpet and funk together, of offering challenging harmonies over a new rhythmic structure, that music represented--and still represents--no fear,” Gentry said. “It kind of challenges normalcy at some level and it represents forward-thinking.”

Gentry encountered other aspects of modern musical thought when he was a student at UC San Diego, where his professors included such noted 20th-Century composers and theorists as Roger Reynolds and Robert Erickson. He also extensively analyzed the work of such composers as Igor Stravinsky on the way to receiving his master’s degree in composition.

The saxophonist feels that residue of the knowledge he acquired in college--as well as aspects from his jazz experience--can be found in the material he writes for Neon, which he formed in 1986 after he left the band Fattburger.

“These days I’m writing pieces that, although based in reggae, African or funk genres, tend to be well put-together and have a harmonic sophistication, both of which are a direct reflection on my studies,” he said.

A few years ago, Gentry realized he was becoming consumed by fusion music. So he formed his Acoustic Quartet to fulfill another need.

“I wanted something to push me,” he said. “You can get complacent playing nothing but one thing. Besides I was raised on be-bop. Those are my roots, too.”

Gentry was born in Corpus Christi, Tex., and moved with his family to San Diego when he was 2. A musician since he was 8, Gentry took up saxophone in the fourth grade. He was later inspired by Brons Larsen, his junior high school band director.

“Brons was a player--he’d show me how to phrase, how to play a solo,” he said.

Under Larsen’s tutelage, Gentry won a soloist award at a San Diego County jazz festival. In 1971, while attending a National Stage Band camp in Portland, Ore., he won another soloing award.

Gentry’s professional career, which he launched at 13, got a jump start when Power, a funk-R & B band he led with bassist Nathan East and keyboardist Carl Evans, Jr., became the nucleus behind soul singer Barry White’s first Love Unlimited tour in 1972. But 17 was too tender an age for the saxophonist to be in the adult music world, he felt, and he returned to complete his studies at UC San Diego.

He’s glad he did, mostly for the education he got, but he’s also delighted that he and bassist East were selected as the university’s 1991 Dual Alumni of the Year. The halls of academia might in the long run offer more reliability than a career as a performer. Gentry recalls his one moment of brief international fame, when he and cornetist Bruce Cameron played the National Anthem for the opening game of the 1984 World Series game between the Detroit Tigers and the San Diego Padres in San Diego’s Jack Murphy Stadium.

“It was pretty dynamic,” he said. “But nothing much happened as a result--no movie contracts, no recording deals. I was just kind of King for a Day.”

For now, Gentry will stick with his horn. “Hey, I’m getting to see the world without joining the Navy.”

* Hollis Gentry plays tonight at 8:30 and 10:15 at El Matador, 16903 Algonquin St., Huntington Beach. Admission: free. Information: (714) 846-5337.