Moving On : Pianist Theo Saunders goes to Santa Barbara after six years in Ventura County. He wants a chance to demonstrate his art.

When Theo Saunders plays, his round, mustachioed face runs through a spectrum of emotions and gestures, in keeping with the investigative path of his solos.

An intensity will come over him during a dense, swirling passage. Then comes a brief beaming grin of satisfaction--gone as soon as it appears--as a phrase hits a stride of resolution, before darting off again.

At other times, he peers deep into the insides of the grand piano, as if sharing a secret with the instrument he has played professionally for the past 29 years.

It’s no secret that Saunders, the jazz luminary who made Ventura County home for the last six years, is something special. Part of the reason he’s relocating to Santa Barbara this weekend is that he’s had little opportunity to demonstrate his art here.

Last week at SoHO, a jazz club in Santa Barbara, Saunders gathered with a quartet of potent players--his right-hand bassist Chris Symer, drummer Dave Karasony and Jon Crosse, the accomplished saxophonist who makes his home in Oak View when not on the road.

Saunders’ long, venturesome solo on “I Hear a Rhapsody” brought hearty applause from an otherwise slightly distracted Thursday night crowd. A patron leaned over and sighed, “That solo made my evening.” Saunders has that kind of knack.

Saunders is nothing if not a champion of the fine art of the jazz solo. You never know quite what direction a solo will take, and therein lies the excitement of the endeavor. He adheres to the forms of jazz tunes--both familiar standards and rarities--in a loose way, tugging at or gliding over the prevailing rhythm or harmony.

When he’s on a roll, ideas pour forth in a long-connected line: It’s as if the solo has a mind of its own.

A New York City native, Saunders grew up in an apartment on West 76th Street where his parents, both Russian emigres who came to the United States as children during the Russian Revolution, have lived for 49 years.

Saunders comes from theatrical stock, dating back to his grandfather’s theater troupe in Kiev. Saunders’ parents have pursued acting, as have sister, brother-in-law and nephew.

“I’m sort of like the black sheep in the family,” he said with a laugh, sitting on the sunny deck of his beach-side Oxnard condominium that he’ll soon leave. “But we had music on in the house all the time when I was growing up. Three or four times a week, we’d all be singing and dancing.

“My mother sang all these show tunes that, strangely enough, became the jazz standards that I still play--like Cole Porter’s ‘I Love You,’ or ‘Softly as in a Morning Sunrise,’ although she used to do it as a tango, the original way it was written.”

Cultural roots are an apparent interest for Saunders, who got a chance to revisit the homeland when he went to Russia two summers ago as musical director of the cross-cultural “Peace Child” project.

He walked on the cobblestone streets in an old section of Kiev, he said.

“I couldn’t help thinking that my father had walked on these same streets as a child. I started to get chills about it.”

Ask Saunders about his influences, and he’ll mention some of the more obvious titans of the modern jazz piano--Bill Evans, Herbie Hancock, Thelonius Monk, Keith Jarrett, McCoy Tyner and Wynton Kelly. But he’s also not one to forget those musicians, unfamiliar names to most, whom he has encountered on a more personal level.

There was the 14-year-old saxophonist Billy Ross, with whom a 16-year-old Saunders played on his first professional job, working the Borscht Belt in the Catskills. There was trumpeter Ray Maldanado, who taught Saunders in Manhattan’s High School for the Performing Arts (Saunders played trumpet in high school before returning to the piano, which he studied at NYU). It was Maldanado who instilled in the young Saunders a passion for jazz.

Living in Montreal at age 20, Saunders hooked up with John Coltrane-influenced guitarist Sonny Greenwich. Greenwich invited Saunders to play a weeklong gig at the Village Vanguard in New York, in a band featuring bassist Jimmy Garrison and drummer Jack DeJohnette.

“It was a terrifying experience for me,” Saunders said. “But interestingly enough, the first night that we played, everything was great. Then I started thinking too much about it and the rest of the week was just shot for me. But that was a major gig.”

Saunders moved to Los Angeles in the mid-’70s, “trying to save a marriage” (he has two children, in their early 20s). Returning to New York in 1980, he began circulating and gaining a good reputation.

In New York, he often played with some key jazz musicians, among them guitarists John Scofield, Mike Stern and Bill Frisell, at a now-defunct club called the 55 Grand St. Bar. There, he also played with saxophonist Steve Slagle, who introduced him to bandleader-composer Carla Bley. Bley was impressed, and Saunders wound up playing in her ensemble for a year.

But, tired of the harried life in New York City, Saunders landed in Ojai in 1985, drawn there by his interest in the teachings of Krishnamurti. Saunders began integrating into the area, teaching at the Oak Grove School in Ojai and holding down a stint for a few years at Wheeler Hot Springs, where he mixed jazz with doses of Bach, Satie and Debussy. Dining music never tasted so good.

It was in Ojai that he went from being Ted to Theo, a name closer to his Russian name, Feodor. “Everybody changes their name when they go to Ojai, too. It’s true. I’ve run into Oceans there, and Bears,” he said, laughing. “So Theo is tame by comparison.”

At the same time, Saunders sought out various like-minded jazz musicians in the area. At one time, he had a hard-bopping quintet featuring trumpeter Jeff Elliot, saxophonist Tom Buckner, Symer and drummer Tom Lackner. The group played at various Ventura-area clubs.

But jazz hasn’t found much of a home in Ventura recently, and the bulk of Saunders’ workload in the last year has been in Santa Barbara. His presence on the scene there has helped to galvanize a surprising new “jazz consciousness,” as Saunders calls it.

There are no lack of opportunities to catch Saunders in action. Saunders plays solo, or with various sitters-in, at SoHO on Mondays and Tuesdays. On Thursdays at SoHO and on Fridays at the Sea Cove, he can be found in a trio featuring Symer and L. A.-based drummer Michael Stefans.

But regular work doesn’t mean that Saunders has a workaday attitude toward his chosen art form.

“Every time I sit down to play,” Saunders said, “I realize how much I don’t know and how much there is to learn. Every time I play, I learn something new, whether it has to do with the instrument or something about myself. In that way, it’s like a religious experience.”

UP CLOSE / THEO SAUNDERS

On the appeal of jazz: “People of all backgrounds could come together and communicate through this particular language. Classical musicians come together to play someone else’s music. Here, you learn a vocabulary, but you learn to express yourself and to combine it with an international community of jazz players. It’s really wonderful, sort of an ideal.”

On his listening habits: “I listen to all the people who are my primary influences and also try to listen to classical music now, a lot of Bach, Shostakovich. I like a lot of different ethnic music--African and Japanese music I’ve been into for years now. I’ve been studying the shakuhachi . Mostly I listen to all the great masters, and then the new kids on the block.”

How many albums is he on? “No more than 10. I’m never around one place long enough. I’m AAA’s best customer. But I think I’m finally going to stay for awhile.”