Professor defines his music

Musician and educator Yusef Lateef is not fond of the word “jazz,” preferring to use “autophysiopsychic” -- his own label for what he describes as music “that comes from one’s physical, mental and spiritual self.”

That may not be any more illuminating than “jazz,” but it’s an accurate enough description of what Lateef was offering Sunday at the Electric Lodge in Venice. Performing with percussionist Adam Rudolph and the 20-piece Go:Organic Orchestra, he was the central figure in a program of music blending improvisation, spontaneously chosen written passages and aleatoric techniques.

If that sounds like a plateful for a multi-instrumentalist who started out as one of the stalwarts in the fertile hard-bop Detroit jazz scene of the ‘50s, think again. Lateef has come a long way in the last four decades. The composer of works for symphony and chamber orchestras, a respected professor at the University of Massachusetts, he has developed his own thoroughly conceptualized approach.

Combined with Rudolph’s method of building musical works from unpredictable combinations of elements, the results Sunday ran a gamut of rhythms and textures. With Rudolph generating a shifting array of ensemble passages via sweeping hand and arm movements, Lateef brought character and personality to the flow of sound with focused soloing on saxophone and flutes.

At 82 he sounded as centered and rhythmically buoyant as ever. And one could only wish that Lateef’s busy schedule allowed time for more frequent hearings from this still too-little recognized master musician.