MUSIC REVIEW : Salonen Returns, Worlds Collide : The conductor leads the Philharmonic in a program in which symphonic modernism meets jazz, with trumpeter Arturo Sandoval as a guest.

Esa-Pekka Salonen is back, and he’s acting strange.

Tuesday night at Hollywood Bowl he put together a concert program that lent new meaning to the adjective bizarre .

It began, after a fast, no-nonsense “Star-Spangled Banner,” with a cursory nod in the direction of minimalism--a primitive compositional style the young maestro has disparaged in the past. Then came a slurpy, ultra-banal showpiece concerto for a visiting trumpeter, Arturo Sandoval. This was followed by a set of jazzy indulgences focusing on the stellar guest, with Salonen beating time dutifully and the assembled virtuosos of the Los Angeles Philharmonic noodling idly in the background.

And that was just the beginning. For a “surprise” encore, the brassy Cuban idol came back and led his own little band, minus the Philharmonic, though a 14-minute jam session that found him singing and gurgling scat-patter cadenzas, doing comic turns, chatting with the crowd, dancing what looked like a mini-shimmy, banging out various rhythms on a convenient drum, tootling like crazy, engaging his sax buddy (Kenny Anderson) in an any-thing-you-can-tootle-I-can-tootle-better-and-higher-and-louder contest, and leading a flock of 10,597 in a sporadic sing-and-clap along. All this, no doubt, with Salonen’s magisterial blessing.

The audience, it must be noted, was cheery. Still, not everyone succumbed to instant ecstasy. One disgruntled patron made a conspicuous exit in conjunction with the long, long delayed cadence, stumbling up the aisle while repeating the same fortissimo grumble to no one in particular: “Dreadful.”

Critics, critics everywhere . . .

After the intermission, which arrived not a millimoment too soon, our maestro for all seasons and all reasons restored order--even if he could not restore concentration--with some old-fangled symphonic Bartok. The circuitous marathon ended just a stroke or two before the witching hour of 11.

Yikes.

Don’t get me wrong. There is nothing dishonorable about a nightclubby popsy-jazzy free-for-all improv convocation at the Bowl. The so-called lighter muses deserve their place under the moon. That is why we have those delirious programs with John Mauceri on weekends, not to mention those adventurous Wednesday night specials.

This, however, was Tuesday. This was a subscription concert by and for the Philharmonic. The wanton mingling of disparate genres achieved nothing so much as aesthetic indigestion. It fused sophistication with vulgarity, jarred expressive sensibilities in the process, and blurred the delicate line that separates good glamour from good taste.

One was left with the impression that Salonen, wanting to be trendy at all costs, had decided to escort his orchestra and his public on a slumming trip. No one says a performance by a symphony orchestra has to be unyieldingly grim, forever strict, staid and formal. Experiments are always welcome. But this was ridiculous.

The music-making, by the way, was excellent. Salonen moved his men and women brightly and briskly through the repetitive chugs and ticks of John Adams’ mock-Maoist fox trot, “The Chairman Dances.” Sandoval, a bravura technician with lips of steel, made a mighty, plangent noise in eine kleine Trash-musik from Soviet Armenia--a slushpump concerto cranked out 53 years ago by Alexander Arutiunian.

Salonen’s contribution to the Dizzy-and-Duke oriented set was, to say the least, modest. Swinging doesn’t appear to be his forte.

Sandoval and his friends seemed to do their loosely ornate thing very well indeed. Seemed? Jazz, it must be admitted, is a language that isn’t spoken or understood in this column.

Given such odd billfellows, Bartok sounded uncommonly cool, even prim. One had to admire the poise of Salonen’s taut and crisp reading of the Concerto for Orchestra, not to mention the precision, clarity and dynamic sensitivity of the ensemble response.

Still, the shifting of stylistic gears proved disorienting. The audience began to dwindle long before the climactic Presto. The impact of the finale wasn’t very grand after all that jazz.