Outside the Box

Ojai is home to a number of well-known jazz musicians, including Maynard Ferguson, who will perform at the Libbey Bowl next month. In another part of town and another neighborhood of the jazz legacy, we have pianist Roger Kellaway, one of those jazz figures who refuses to fit neatly into a given category.

Kellaway was trained classically, is respected in jazz circles and has made a tidy living in film and television work. He has given solo concerts in Ojai that suggest the restless gamut of his interests, now swinging, now floating in an ambient, almost new age direction, but always with his intelligence in tow.

On a newly released 1978 duet recording with the gifted British clarinetist Tony Coe, Kellaway reveals yet another side to his musical persona, that of largely atonal, free improviser. The album, “British-American Blue,” is one of the first releases on the venturesome German label Between the Lines.

As he writes in the liner notes, Kellaway met Coe when Coe was hired to play saxophone for Kellaway’s score for a film, “The Silent Scream.” But Kellaway first became aware of Coe’s wide musical range when he heard a concert featuring Coe and Derek Bailey, the icon of free improv guitar playing.

Impressed with what he heard, Kellaway invited Coe to go into a studio in Wembley, England, one June day in ’78. Apart from “The Burgundy Bruise,” a blues tune ending the set in an out-of-character manner, they heeded the muse of the moment, without scores or prep work.

What emerges is a side of Kellaway’s playing rarely heard, as he creates an aural action painting, with experimental urgings that suggest the work of Cecil Taylor, Ran Blake, Paul Bley and Olivier Messiaen along the way. More important, he establishes a sense of active musical dialogue with Coe. Together, they do an impressive dance along the loose border between free jazz and 20th century classical vocabularies.

For those keeping track, the Kellaway plot thickens.

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Summer School: Traditionally, the summer season functions like a long winter’s nap for classical music culture. This is the accepted cool-down between regular concert seasons, when batteries are recharged and ears rested.

Around these parts, however, summer affords local music lovers a long, satisfying opportunity to bask in world-class music, courtesy of the Music Academy of the West.

The internationally renowned summer educational program brings students and faculty of note to town. As they take advantage of the educational activities on the lavish Montecito campus, they grace Santa Barbara with a rich layer of high musical culture.

The public benefits from the transient population of musicians in town, with chamber music concerts on Tuesdays and orchestral concerts on Saturdays through August at the Lobero Theatre.

Officially, the academy’s concert schedule doesn’t begin until the gala orchestra concert July 1.

Next week, though, it kicks off another intriguing aspect of its program, the daily master classes. A limited number of tickets are available to the public, offering an often enlightening way to enjoy a chunk of a summer’s afternoon.

As always, the most popular events are the vocal classes. Two next week are sold out: Marilyn Horne and Warren Jones’ “Introduction of Singers and Accompanists” on Tuesday, and Friday’s class led by Lotfi Mansouri, the San Francisco Opera’s general director and guest of the July 1 Lobero concert.

But there are other instrumental classes available to listeners, including classes by such longtime faculty members as pianist Jerome Lowenthal and cellist Dennis Brott, brother of the New West Symphony’s maestro, Boris Brott.

DETAILS

Music Academy of the West, daily master classes on campus, 1070 Fairway Road in Santa Barbara. Tickets: 969-8787. For a season brochure, call (805) 969-4726 Web site: https://www.musicacademy.org. E-mail: festival@musicacademy.org.