It’s more than just all that jazz -- there’s a classical edge too

Free-form and off the cuff, jazz appears to have little in common with strait-laced classical music. That’s why the Pasadena Symphony developed Clazzical Notes, a bimonthly series that explores the differences and similarities between the two. The show is half concert, half lecture -- a sort of live, musical version of the television show “Inside the Actors Studio.”

The theme of Monday’s Clazzical Notes is “Meet the Sidemen.” Moderated by jazz historian and drummer Washington Rucker, the 90-minute program begins with brief performances by a jazz ensemble, then a classical trio, each followed by a discussion among the musicians and Rucker. The format is then repeated with pairs of musicians from each discipline -- trombone with trombone, trumpet with trumpet -- playing songs and discussing how they use their instruments to interpret specific pieces. The evening culminates with back-to-back jazz and classical performances of the same song, and an audience Q&A.;

“Jazz listeners love music, but they may not have gone into the foray of classical because they don’t know it. Same for classical music listeners,” says Jerri Price, education director for the Pasadena Symphony, which launched Clazzical Notes last year. “We wanted to be able to say, ‘You can get a little bit of both,’ presented in a way that’s digestible from both ends.”

*

Susan Carpenter

*

Clazzical Notes, Travis Auditorium, Fuller Theological Seminary, 135 N. Oakland Ave., Pasadena. 7 p.m. Monday. Free. (626) 793-7172; www.pasadenasymphony.org