JAZZMAN FROM THE GROUND UP.

Byline: Reed Johnson Daily News Staff Writer

Get Joe Lovano talking about his mentors, and the goateed, heavyset tenor saxophonist will rattle off a formidable list of big band, be-bop and free-jazz legends.

His greatest influence, though, was a more obscure figure, a Cleveland barber and sax player named Tony Lovano who answered to ``Big T'' - or, in Joe Lovano's case, ``Dad.''

While it's surely an exaggeration to say that Big T taught his son everything he knows, the old man ``definitely instilled a passion in me,'' Lovano says. From his youth, Lovano can remember his father exposing him to such jazz masters as Sonny Stitt, Gene Ammons and Dizzy Gillespie as they toured the Rust Belt like emissaries of some exotic religion.

Their soulful incantations were mother's milk to the young Lovano, who soaked up rhythms, harmonies and structures along with the street-hip, blue-collar sensibilities that have shaped his own melodic inventions.

``Being a teen-ager and the oldest in the family, he brought me with him in the jazz sessions and to all the rehearsals,'' Lovano, 45, says of his father. ``That got me over the fear of a lot of this technical music, and it gave me a lot of courage to be playing with cats of that age.''

Big T's openness to jazz's multiple guises, from the swing era to the modern idioms of Miles Davis and John Coltrane, helped his son become a thoughtful student - as a well as a lover - of the form. Not many tenor saxophonists Lovano's age can claim to have apprenticed with so many premier players: Dexter Gordon, Stan Getz, Sonny Rollins, Zoot Sims, Branford Marsalis, Joshua Redman.

Even fewer can claim to have courted mainstream success without sacrificing their integrity. Whether the category is big band, hard-driving bop, arty abstraction or classical-influenced chamber jazz, Lovano has investigated it all and brought his audience with him.

Lovano will bring that inquiring spirit with him Saturday to UCLA's Royce Hall, where he'll perform with Gonzalo Rubalcaba. A dazzling young Cuban pianist who met Lovano during a 1988 tour, Rubalcaba is known for his probing yet dynamic approaches to bebop, pop, Latin and Afro-Caribbean music, frequently underscored by a yearning romanticism that reminds some listeners of Chopin and Lizst.

``It just hits you, with his (Rubalcaba's) energy and his sound and his beautiful articulation,'' says Lovano, twice named Jazz Artist of the Year by Down Beat magazine. ``He has a real distinctive clearness and separation on each note.''

The duo's current 10-city tour is an extension of their multicultural collaboration ``Flying Colors'' (Blue Note Records), released last January. With Lovano handling multiple reeds (and even drums on a couple of numbers), and Rubalcaba contributing impressionistic and biting, emphatic solos, the disc offers unusual takes on old standards as well as some original tunes.

On tour, the pair have been drawing on an expanded repertoire that includes tunes by Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Tadd Dameron, Thelonius Monk and Duke Ellington, among others, deconstructing and reconsidering as they go.

``Right now, the duets are a beautiful thing,'' says Lovano. ``I'm learning a lot about presentation, because in a duo, man, you can't hide behind anything. I'm also learning a lot about orchestration so that it (the music) is not just all coming from the same place. I think we really captured that on the record, you know, really trying to create the music instead of just calling the tune and re-creating it.''

Having learned his craft the old-fashioned way - during roadhouse and club gigs on a three-year tour with Woody Herman's Thundering Herd and in freewheeling jams with John Scofield and Bill Frisell - Lovano maintains that players need time to mature. Not even Miles Davis could make ``Kind of Blue'' his first time in a recording studio, he points out.

Although jazz always will need a steady supply of ``young cats,'' Lovano suggests there's no substitute for paying your dues.

``Jazz is really about your personal history as a player and what you've come up through and what inspires you. I'm really trying to tap into that.''

You can bet Big T would be proud.

THE FACTS

What: Joe Lovano and Gonzalo Rubalcaba.

Where: Royce Hall, UCLA campus; enter from Sunset Boulevard and Westwood Drive.

When: 8 p.m. Saturday.

Tickets: $40, $37 and $33; $13 for UCLA students with valid ID. Call [phone].

CAPTION(S):

Photo

Photo: Tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano, left, and pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba continue their duo tour Saturday at UCLA's royce hall.