Jazz Journey Knows No Boundaries : Concerts: The Multicultural Arts Council of Orange County presents an “Ethnic Jazz Series” on three evenings this month at the Irvine Barclay Theatre.

Music, despite the best efforts of writers to pigeonhole its various styles, knows no borders. And no form of music has crossed more cultural and stylistic borders than jazz.

That’s the lesson behind the Multicultural Arts Council of Orange County’s “Journeys in Jazz: An Ethnic Jazz Series,” to be held on three evenings in October at the Irvine Barclay Theatre.

Patricia Goldman, the executive director of the Multicultural Arts Council, says the series is a departure for the organization that produces the annual Kaleidoscope Festival and other programs to promote understanding and cooperation between cultures.

“Here, we’ll be looking at a relatively new art form, one that has developed in the last century,” Goldman said. “We’ll be looking at the ethnic contributions that have changed and shaped jazz.”

The series opens tonight with San Francisco-based composer-keyboardist Jon Jang and his Pan-Asian Arkestra. It continues Oct. 20 with world-music devotees Caroline and L. Shankar with trumpeter Don Cherry and concludes Oct. 30 with trumpeter Freddie Hubbard.

“We’ve looked to traditional jazz with Freddie Hubbard. Though he has changed over the years, gone under a maturation process, he’s still basically jazz. In contrast, we also have artists who are making headway in the jazz movement through other cultural and inspirational sources such as Jon Jang from the Asian community.”

Composer Jang, 38--currently a visiting lecturer at UC Berkeley--will give the Southern California premiere of his five-movement suite “Tiananmen!” tonight. The piece, Jang said earlier this week from San Francisco, commemorates the June 4, 1989, massacre in a global perspective.

“There are so many influences coming together in the piece,” he said. “African-American, Cantonese opera, Chinese work songs as well as the European classical tradition and blues.”

The 11-piece orchestra adds Chinese instrumentation to that of a jazz ensemble. Members include flutist-composer James Newton as well as Zhang Yan, who plays a zither-like instrument called a guzheng and Beijing native Liu Qi-Chao, who plays various instruments including the sheng , a Chinese mouth organ.

“The idea for calling the group arkestra came from (Los Angeles pianist) Horace Tapscott, who calls his big band the Pan-African Peoples Arkestra. I’ve always liked his vision, which is not competitive but looks to contribute to the community.”

The piece’s five movements are preceded by an introduction that the composer says contrasts Cantonese opera with the blues. Its percussive, transitional sections were influenced by drummer Max Roach’s tribute to Martin Luther King Jr. titled “The Dream.”

The cultural melange continues in the first movement, “Tears From the Peaceful Gate.” “If you translate Tiananmen, it means peaceful or heavenly gate, “ Jang says. “There’s an irony having this huge square, the place where this night of violence occurred, called heavenly .”

The major theme in the movement comes from a Chinese folk song, “Mengjiang Nu” (“Mang’s Daughter”), which is based on a story that expresses a women’s sadness when she learns her husband has been taken away to build the Great Wall.”

Other movements look to the suites of Duke Ellington, the ballads of Charles Mingus and the impressionistic works of 20th-Century French composer Oliver Messiaen for inspiration.

“Tiananmen!,” which premiered June 4 at the Julia Morgan Theatre in Berkeley, is scheduled to be recorded for the Italian Soul Note label in February.

At the next concert in the series, multi-instrumentalist L. Shankar and keyboardist-vocalist Carol Shankar team with Cherry. Although best known for his stint playing pocket trumpet in saxophonist Ornette Coleman’s groundbreaking bands, Cherry also plays piano and melodica as well as such non-traditional jazz instruments as wooden flutes and the doussn’gouni , an African stringed instrument. His 1990 A & M release, “Multikulti,” pushes traditional jazz forms in a number of cultural directions.

Series closer Hubbard came out of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers to record his own albums with the likes of keyboardist Herbie Hancock, saxophonist Wayne Shorter and pianist McCoy Tyner for the Blue Note label in the ‘60s.

He was also on board when saxophonist John Coltrane recorded his forward-looking experiment “Ascension” that same decade. In the ‘70s, the trumpeter explored fusion styles and also recorded with the VSOP quintet (with Shorter, Hancock, drummer Tony Williams). More recently, Hubbard has shown a decided Latin influence, working as a special guest with Poncho Sanchez. His 1991 “Bolivia” also looks south for inspiration.

Jon Jang and the Pan-Asian Arkestra appear tonight at 8 at the Irvine Barclay Theatre, 4242 Campus Drive, Irvine. Tickets: $16 and $20. Series tickets: $26 and $32 for any two concerts, $38 and $48 for all three. (714) 854-4646.