Brazilian Songs Get a Local Tone : Pop music: Feijoada Completa--a band that’s a hobby for Glen Garrett--plays at El Matador in Huntington Beach tonight.

For most of us, hobbies take us far away from our occupations. Most weekend gardeners don’t make their livings driving around in pickup trucks loaded with mowers and blowers; those who thrive on needlepoint probably don’t drive to the garment district every day to toil over a hot Singer.

Glen Garrett isn’t like most of us. He earns his living with woodwinds; he gets his do-re-mi playing everything from moving pictures to parties. That’s Garrett’s biting horn, in fact, on the closing theme to KNBC’s 11 p.m. TV newscast, and that’s his alto sax popping up occasionally during Danny Elfman’s “Batman Returns” soundtrack.

Yet when Garrett takes some time off, and his two kids are tucked away in bed, the Salt Lake City native doesn’t head for the nearest non-musical habitat he can find. He parks himself in his study and works on charts for his 20-piece Brazilian big band, Feijoada Completa.

“It’s what I do with almost all my spare time,” he said on the phone from the home in North Hollywood he shares with his wife, Andrea, and the kids.

Feijoada Completa--named after Brazil’s national dish, a black bean stew--has played El Matador in Huntington Beach half a dozen times and returns there tonight. The band just sort of appeared in Garrett’s life a few years ago.

“I had been enthralled with Brazilian music for years and had played with many Brazilian bands, and one day I sat down and wrote an arrangement,” he said. “Then that became six or seven arrangements, and I decided to call a rehearsal. Then we got a job, and the band sort of took off. It’s generated more momentum on its own than I ever expected.”

Garrett feels that the positive response results from the warmth of the music he purveys: “Brazilian music’s infectious. The players like it, so do audiences. It’s the kind of music that makes you happy and makes you feel good.”

He culls the group’s repertoire from staples of Brazilian popular music, including Ivan Lins’ “Antes de Seja Mais Tarde,” which was recorded by the Manhattan Transfer, and “Voce Abusou,” one of the most popular songs in Brazil in the ‘70s,” Garrett said.

He doesn’t fiddle with the pieces a lot. “I try to stay as close as possible to the original feels and ideas of the tunes,” he said. That’s what I like.”

Garrett puts his mark on the works via his orchestrations. “I like to use a lot of instrumental color, like having the woodwinds play bass flutes or the trombones play baritone horns. That’s my stamp.”

Brazilian music has been bubbling away in his life since he was a teen-ager, when he traveled to Brazil as a missonary.

“I lived in Porto Alegre, a town in the southern portion of the country, and there was music everywhere. In the neighborhood, you heard music coming from loud speakers in front of record stores, or you sometimes heard drums being played in the distance. And people sang along with the radio.”

After graduating from the University of Utah in 1972 with a degree in music theory and earning a master’s at Cal State Northridge in 1975, Garrett made the rounds of L.A.’s Brazilian music scene. He played with Oscar Castro-Neves (and can be heard on two of the guitarist’s JVC Records releases), Kleber Jorge and the renowned composer-saxophonist Moacir Santos, who had a particularly profound effect on him.

“For one reason or another, I could never get his tunes out of my head, and being around him was like being around Duke Ellington. He’s a genius.”

* Glen Garrett’s Feijoada Completa plays tonight at 8:30 and 10:15 at El Matador, 16903 Algonquin St., Huntington Beach. $6 cover, no minimum. (714) 846-5337.