Bob Florence Goes Where Music and Inspiration Take Him

Seated at a modest electronic keyboard, composer and bandleader Bob Florence peered at his sheet music over the top of his eyeglasses, seeming to seek inspiration to perform for the crowd packing the venerable Lighthouse nightclub.

Find it he did Wednesday at Redondo Beach’s former bastion of West Coast jazz, delighting the sunset concertgoers with a spirited solo on a bebop piece by trumpeter Carl Saunders, and again on his arrangement of the standard “Whisper Not.” Florence then gave an impressive rendering of Stan Kenton’s “Artistry in Rhythm,” in which he seemed to pull the sound of a full-sized piano from the diminutive instrument’s 44 keys.

Inspiration is important to Florence, an Emmy Award-winning composer-arranger and 13-time Grammy nominee who today will lead his Limited Edition Big Band in two benefit concerts at the Margaret A. Webb Performing Arts Center in Los Alamitos. (The 6 and 9 p.m. shows at Los Alamitos High School will benefit the school’s jazz band boosters and honor longtime band director Chuck Wackerman for his 42 years as a music educator.)

“Where do you get an idea, where do you take it, how does it come about?” Florence mused in an interview from his Thousand Oaks home. “Sometimes ideas just jump out at you.”

As an example, Florence cited his writing for the British Broadcasting Corp.’s jazz band in London.

“I used to write . . . two standards and four originals a year, and they would give me a list of standards that I wasn’t necessarily enamored with. Once they wanted an arrangement of ‘Chicago,’ not the one with ‘My kind of town, Chicago is . . . ‘ but the one that goes back to the ‘20s. I was just dreading it and wondering what was I going to do.

“That line, ‘Chicago is,’ kept going through my head, and I kept thinking ‘How can I use it in the other song?’ Then I just put them together,” he said, humming the four-note line that became his leitmotif. “I used it in the background, the foreground, in the interludes of the other song. It was absolute inspiration.”

Born in Los Angeles, the 66-year-old musician was a composition student at Los Angeles City College when, to hear how his music charts sounded, he assembled groups at the Musicians Union. This trial-and-error education led to the skills that Florence is known for today: satiny instrumental blends laced with musical wit and whimsy.

Florence’s reputation got a boost in 1959 when he was asked to arrange a pair of numbers for the Harry James Orchestra. Soon Florence was also doing work for Louie Bellson and Si Zentner, for whom he arranged the 1961 hit “Up a Lazy River.”

The 1960s found Florence was writing for and accompanying vocalists Sarah Vaughn, Vikki Carr, Jimmy Witherspoon and Julie Andrews. Bandleader Sergio Mendes, saxophonist Bud Shank and guitarist Joe Pass recorded his music. His charts were covered by Count Basie and Stan Kenton.

Since Florence’s first big-band album, “Name Band 1959,” he has released a dozen more, including the respected 1965 “Here and Now” (Liberty Records) and a more recent series of three Limited Edition Big Band albums for the MAMA label. “Serendipity 18” (the title is inspired by a a favorite New York restaurant and the number of musicians in his band) is scheduled for release next week. As usual, the disc will be a mix of Florence originals and standard arrangements, including Stanley Turrentine’s “Sugar.”

“How do you pick a standard?” he asked rhetorically. “I don’t pick them; they pick me. They just jump out at me. By the time you find a ‘Laura’ or an ‘Emily,’ [both heard on recent Florence recordings] they’ve been out there long enough that you can do what you want with them. On ‘Come Rain or Come Shine,’ I used the chord changes but didn’t rely on the [melody].

“Wherever the music leads me, that’s where I’m going to go. . . . If I can get more outlandish with something, I do it.”

* The Bob Florence Limited Edition plays the Margaret A. Webb Performing Arts Center, Los Alamitos High School, 3591 Cerritos Ave. Today at 6 and 9 p.m. With the Los Alamitos High School and McAuliffe/Oak Middle School jazz bands directed by Chuck Wackerman. $12-$25. (714) 761-5999.