IF, as the great French poet, Rimbaud, claimed, the door closes on a writer at 20, then Joe Lovano's equivalent of the artistic womb must have been filled to overflowing by that time. True, he's a jazz musician, not a writer, in an idiom where, ideally, the performer is constantly challenged to create - by colleagues, the material, audiences and his own personality.
But Lovano, a big, bearded, genial man, comes from a well-stocked musical background. There's a picture of him from 1952, which shows him cradled in his mother's arms; with a free hand she holds an alto saxophone beside him, dwarfing the two-month-old baby. It was taken by his father, the late Tony "Big T" Lovano, barber, part-time tenor player and a force on the local Cleveland jazz scene which produced such luminous contemporaries as trumpeter Benny Bailey and the great guitarist, Jim Hall.
"He heard Charlie Parker live," recalls the son fondly, "and he knew all those tunes. He had a real passion to play and would practise and be playing all the time at home. So I had a chance not only to study with him and play with him, but to hear him - and when he would practise down in the basement, man, the rafters would shake. So, like, that gave me a sense of `wow, I have to produce the sound when I play'. And that made me practise with a different kind of awareness."
Lovano senior belonged to the Coleman Hawkins school of big-toned, macho tenors epitomised by such players as Illinois Jacquet, Gene Ammons and Ben Webster. But he was open-minded enough to appreciate Lester Young, the tenor whose light, veiled, rhythmically complex approach was the antithesis of the Hawkins style. "My dad had a chance to hear Lester play live and he talked about it his whole life - and just because I knew that as a teenager, that made me listen and respect that music like from a deep place when I was a kid," he says.
It was, he feels, a perfect foundation for striking out into different, freer pastures later on. "It's a matter of coming from the inside out, being involved as a young player, to study the great songs of, let's say, the American Song Book of Broadway tunes and standard songs, as well as developing conceptions within the language of swing and bebop. The tunes that Charlie Parker developed his whole conception and style on were coming from the traditions of the song form in harmony and rhythm.
"Of course, in my generation, concepts of freer jazz and more modern exploration were normal, and I just learned listening to John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins and Miles Davis and Ornette Coleman. At the same time, I was studying and hearing Ben Webster and Bill Evans and Bud Powell."
It's a catholic list; the blues-drenched, relentless Powell was the archetypal bop pianist, Evans a poet of the piano whose allegiance to the song form didn't prevent him from joining Davis in modal explorations, while Coltrane, Davis and Rollins all broke out of the tyrannies of harmony, and Coleman hardly acknowledged their constraints existed to begin with. "But it's the language and it's the way you play with melodic sense that really brings the music forward," he adds.
Unlike his father, who stayed in Cleveland all his life, the son left for Berklee, the famed Boston college of music. "I, primarily, was coming from a bebop school of playing, but I was really aware of John Coltrane's music, and when I went to Boston in 1971 it was the first time I heard, let's say, Keith Jarrett's quartet live, with Charlie Haden, Paul Motian and Dewey Redman. And I heard Miles live that time, when that record, Live Evil, came out. I started to experience some new music right in front of me and that was a big turning point.
"At the time you're just involved; you're practising and you're trying to open up your conception - now that I look back at it - and I've been teaching more - it's really important for young players to look ahead of themselves and try to put themselves in situations that might seem impossible," he laughs, "because then you develop conceptions and ways of playing that lead you in directions."
He accepts that there are risks involved. "There was a period in free jazz when there was just sound and energy, but then Keith Jarrett and others created this way of playing that harmony was also there. It was harmonic, it was lyrical, it was free-flowing, but yet there was inner form that you create. And those were the areas that I worked in." He did it so effectively that within 10 years he was working with the likes of Paul Motian and other players who have helped to push the boundaries out.
In between, there were plenty of other things to shape him and keep him, musically speaking, on his toes. "Living around New York since the mid-1970s," he says, "I've had the chance to play where George Coleman and Clifford Jordan" - both exceptional tenor players - "and cats like that had been in the club where I was playing and, man, it puts you in a different world. And you want them to dig you. You don't want to play what they play, but you want to capture their attention somehow, with your sound and your approach - and you learn a lot when that stuff happens."
He also learned in what jazz musicians regard as one of the best colleges of all - playing in big bands, among them those of the late Woody Herman and Mel Lewis. Herman's was his first big-time gig. "I joined the band in 1976. It was his 40th anniversary period and I took part in a concert at Carnegie Hall that was recorded for RCA." Herman featured him quite a bit at the concert, a mark of his regard for Lovano from a bandleader whose past tenors, also playing at the concert, included Stan Getz and Zoot Sims, along with Al Cohn and Jimmy Giuffre. "I played Early Autumn at the microphone with Stan Getz playing lead and I played my part next to him - and that was something else!"
The long period of polishing his craft, which has made Lovano one of the finest tenors now active in jazz began, finally, to earn him growing respect outside the circle of great jazzmen who already knew what he could do. Beginning, perhaps, with Land- marks, an album he made in 1990 with John Abercrombie and Kenny Werner, the 1990s have seen him gain some of the wider recognition he deserves. He followed up Land- marks with more albums, all good, some exceptional and at least one, From the Soul, made with bassist Dave Holland, drummer Ed Blackwell and the late Michel Petrucciani on piano, with claims to be a classic.
In Dublin, he will play with the Guilfoyle-Nielsen Trio, as well as the RTE Concert Orchestra - arrangements by Jim McNeely, a marvellous composer/arranger and a fine pianist whose credits include Stan Getz and Phil Woods; and two by the veteran writer, Manny Albam, including Albam's orchestral setting of The Peacocks, a beautiful composition by the late Jimmy Rowles.
Then it's back to Carnegie Hall for another orchestral stint, conducted by Sir Simon Rattle, of Ellington compositions, with arrangements for full orchestra by Luther Henderson. Lovano and a core of jazz musicians - Clark Terry, Joshua Redman, Bobby Watson, Regina Carter and a rhythm section of Geri Allen, Peter Washington and Lewis Nash - recorded them with the Birmingham Symphony in England last year. His dad would have been knocked out at all the baby he photographed 48 years ago has achieved.
Joe Lovano and the Guilfoyle-Neilsen Trio play on Saturday September 23rd at Vicar Street. Lovano holds a masterclass, the Improvising Musician, at the NCH, Saturday September 23rd at 2 p.m.
Dublin Jazz Week runs from September 18th to 24th. Information and booking at the Festival Box Office, open Monday to Saturday, noon to 7 p.m., at Tower Records, 6-8 Wicklow Street, Dublin 2. Tel: 016725666.