JAZZ MASTERS AT SOUTHEAST; TRUMPET VIRTUOSO CLARK TERRY WILL PERFORM TUESDAY ALONG WITH THE JIM WIDNER BIG BAND

Jefferson City-based bassist Jim Widner leads the big band that will accompany Clark Terry.

Pairing a jazz trumpet legend with arguably the best big band working today is a bill worthy of Carnegie Hall or Lincoln Center. Academic Auditorium will have to do.

"An Evening of Jazz" will present Clark Terry along with the Jim Widner Big Band in a concert at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday.

The 77-year-old Terry is an alumnus of the Count Basie, Duke Ellington and Tonight Show orchestras, one of the last of the great big band soloists. He also has written three books about jazz education.

Widner's 20-piece big band has released two highly praised CDs, the most recent "Body and Soul," and includes many veterans of the Stan Kenton, Woody Herman, Maynard Ferguson and the Tonight Show bands.

"(The concert) really is a coup," said Barry Bernhardt, director of bands at Southeast. "I'm so excited about it I can't wait."

The concert is an example of the role friendships play in music.

Bernhardt had been planning a concert spotlighting the Widner band for over a year. He is friends with the Jefferson City-based Widner, who visits the university once a month to work with its jazz musicians.

Then Southeast President Dale Nitzschke suggested he invite Terry, whom Nitzschke had known while president of the University of New Hampshire. Terry is an adjunct professor at UNH and recipient of an honorary doctorate from the university.

"All I had to do was make a call, and he said, Oh gosh, I'd love to," said Bernhardt, a trumpet player who counts Terry one of his heroes.

As a boy, Terry's first trumpet was a discarded piece of garden hose with a kerosene funnel stuck in the end and a piece of lead pipe for a mouthpiece.

"It made the most horrible sound you ever heard," he recalled in a phone interview. "The neighbors got so sick of it they bought me a horn from a pawn shop."

Terry got much better in a city that was a hotbed of jazz trumpet talent, including Miles Davis.

He is known as someone who bridged the gap between the big bands and modernists like Davis.

Louis Armstrong called Terry his favorite trumpet player. "He was very encouraging," Terry said.

Toward the end of Armstrong's career, Dizzy Gillespie and Terry lived near "Pops" and would drop in on him. "We'd say, Pops, we've come to get our batteries charged," Terry said. "He was the history of jazz."

On the "Tonight Show," the trumpet virtuoso also drew laughs during the "Stump the Band" segment by becoming Mumbles, his parody of the old blues singers he used to encounter playing gin joints in St. Louis.

He also is known for championing the fluegelhorn as a solo instrument.

In St. Louis, trumpet players used to put an old felt hat with a hole in it over the bell of their horn to get a mellower sound. Years later, Terry helped the Selmer company design its first fluegelhorn.

Today, much of his energy goes into jazz education, which hardly existed when he was growing up. The only jazz teachers were established players, who often would give wrong answers to your questions, Terry said.

"I asked one guy how to get a good tone. He told me to grit your teeth and wiggle your left ear. I was naive enough to try it."

At 77, Terry wryly compares himself to a fastball pitcher who can't throw his pitch 100 times a game anymore. "He throws sliders and maybe hits a few batters until he can throw a fastball again."

Widner has played bass for the Woody Herman, Glenn Miller and Stan Kenton orchestras. Kenton became known for conducting clinics for students, and Widner helped manage those clinics. When the band leader died, Widner took over the clinics himself.

Tuesday afternoon, members of the Widner band will give a clinic for Southeast's top jazz group, the University Jazz Ensemble.

The Widner trumpet section is filled with musicians Bernhardt considers heroes, including Mike Vax, Clay Jenkins and Dave Scott. Drummer John Von Ohlen fronts his own band, called the Blue Wisp Big Band, in Cincinnati.

"The people that come are sure going to get their money's worth," Bernhardt said.

All seats are reserved. Tickets are available by calling the Department of Music at 651-2141.

The concert is sponsored by Southeast Missouri State University, the Department of Music and the University Jazz Program.