CREATIVE FIRE BURNS IN JAZZ INNOVATOR.

Byline: Fred Shuster Music Writer

A gift from beyond the grave led to the haunting musical salute to Mexico that Charlie Haden brings to Disney Hall tonight.

It happened last year when the jazz bassist, composer and Cal Arts professor met the daughter of Mexican composer Jose Sabre Marroquin, a TV and film composer who also penned Bach-inspired classical pieces. Haden had recorded her late father's song, ``Nocturnal,'' and the woman, who stopped backstage after a Haden concert in Austin, Texas, presented the bandleader with a portfolio of her father's compositions.

Moved and inspired by Marroquin's work, Haden returned to his Agoura Hills home and immediately called longtime friend and collaborator Gonzalo Rubalcaba in Florida, saying, ``We should do this.'' Haden sent the Marroquin songs to the Cuban pianist, and the bassist and his wife, singer Ruth Cameron, traveled to Miami to meet with Rubalcaba.

Some of Marroquin's songs are recognized as landmarks of Mexico's pop music, but pieces such as ``Nostalgia'' and ``Cancion De Cuna'' were written for piano and violin or flute, not as a basis for jazz improvisation. Haden and Rubalcaba had to figure out how to reinterpret the material to suit their mission.

``It worried me at first,'' Haden recalled. ``I thought, 'How are we going to do these in a way that the musicians can improvise?' Gonzalo and I worked on it, and he wrote these great arrangements using different flows and different pulses and different tempos.''

Tracks magazine called the resulting ``Land of the Sun'' (Verve) disc ``chamber music that swings,'' while the New Republic noted that Haden's albums are never merely collections of songs, ``but integrated, thoroughly conceived works about something.''

Tonight's Disney Hall concert finds Haden on the bill with his onetime mentor, avant-garde jazz pioneer Ornette Coleman. As bassist with Coleman's revolutionary late-'50s quartet, Haden was one of the free jazz movement's founders and helped elevate the role of the double bass from accompanist to direct participant. Along with playing on hundreds of acclaimed albums, the Grammy-winning Haden founded the jazz studies program at California Institute of the Arts in Valencia in '82. The program emphasizes self-discovery in both life and art.

``I used to talk to Ornette about creating music in a way that when you play it, it's like you've never played music before,'' Haden said. ``It's like you're playing for the first time. So every time you play, you're striving to create something that's never been before.''

For tonight's ``Land of the Sun'' concert downtown, the Haden octet includes Rubalcaba, saxophonist Ernie Watts, trumpeter/flugelhornist Michael Rodriguez and guitarist Larry Koonse.

``I'm always looking for different combinations of musicians,'' Haden, 67, said of an ensemble that also features alto sax, flute and percussion. ``I try to bring together musicians that can make magic. It's not so much the combination as it is the individual and their values. When I find a musician that has the same values as I do, I want to make music with him.''

His mission, Haden adds, is to ``open jazz up. I don't want to keep the audience limited. I want to reach people who have never come to a jazz concert before. One way to do that is by making records that have a lot of different kinds of music on them.''

The Marroquin project was also a success for the composer's survivors. Upon receiving an advance copy of ``Land of the Sun,'' Marroquin's daughter, Patricia Mendes, rang Haden.

``This music is very special for her - one of the songs was written for her when she was a baby, one of the songs her father wrote for her mother. She was almost in tears.''

Fred Shuster, [phone]

fred.shuster(at)dailynews.com

CHARLIE HADEN'S LAND OF THE SUN

Where: Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., Los Angeles.

When: 8 tonight.

Tickets: $25 to $80. [phone], www.ticketmaster.com.