Museum Pieces From Vinny Golia

Vinny Golia, the multi-woodwind player whose performances are meeting places for adventure and tradition, views music as a powerful force for emotional renewal.

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“Music gives something to people’s lives,” Golia says. “I’ve had people come up to me after a show and say, ‘I didn’t feel good before your show and now I feel great.’ That makes it all worthwhile.”

It makes sense that Golia, who became a musician after first being a painter, would consider his musical approach to be painterly. “The main thrusts of my work are rhythm, color, shape and form,” says the Los Angeles resident who tonight offers the second of five free Friday evening concerts at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Shows run from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m.

Golia translates “color” to mean “the sound you make on your instrument,” he says, and “shape and form” are about “the melody line” that’s created during an improvisation. “Melody’s the most important aspect,” he says. “A lot of times the solo is like taking your original melody and dissecting it, and reassembling it in many different ways.”

At LACMA, Golia will bring in a different ensemble of longtime associates each week--though some of the personnel will overlap.

Golia, who owns and records for Nine Winds Records, says LACMA presents an ideal venue. “I feel privileged to play there,” he says. “I was able to pick my own people and I don’t have to compromise any of the music. That’s great.”

Count Eddie: Five-time Grammy winner Eddie Palmieri, who makes a rare Southern California appearance Thursday at the Hop in the City of Industry, is royalty in the world of Latin music, and he knows it. “Tito Puente is the king, so maybe I’m the count,” he says, adding a mischievous-sounding laugh.

It’s not like Palmieri, who has made more than 25 albums in a 35-year career, doesn’t deserve that kind of title. He’s one of the most honored, as well as outspoken, artists to play what he calls Cuban-based “Afro-Caribbean jazz” but is more generally known as salsa, a name he can’t stand.

“That’s something you put on tacos,” says Palmieri, 57, a native New Yorker of Puerto Rican ancestry. “When you call our music salsa, you’re belittling the most complex rhythmic patterns in the world.”

Palmieri, while citing such pianistic influences as McCoy Tyner and Thelonious Monk, says he’s not a jazz player. But there’s a lot of jazz flavor on “Palmas,” his upcoming release on Elektra Nonesuch, and his current band finds his explosive five-piece piano-bass-congas-timbales-bongos rhythm section augmented by a crack jazz horn section: John Walsh, Donald Harrison and Conrad Herwig. “With these players, I get a maximum of jazz, while under them is this great rhythm section that is geared to provide excitement.”

Palmieri always insists on giving credit to his older brother, pianist Charlie Palmieri, who died of cancer in 1988. “Nobody could play like my brother,” he says. “And everywhere he went, he recommended me, and that opened up my career.”

* Eddie Palmieri plays one show only on Thursday, 8 p.m., at the Hop, 17647 E. Gale Ave., City of Industry. $10. (818) 810-8467.