01:00 AM EST on Sunday, March 6, 2005

BY RICK MASSIMO
Journal Pop Music Writer

In Paul Austerlitz's case, those who can do also teach.

Through 12 recordings, two books and a 12-year teaching career, Austerlitz -- a bass clarinetist, composer and professor of music and Africana studies at Brown University -- has focused in his artistic and academic work on the intersection of jazz and the music of the Caribbean.

Austerlitz, 47, was born in Finland, to Finnish and Romanian parents, and came to New York at the age of 1.

The city's musical and human diversity lit the way for him: as he began playing jazz, the excursions into Latin, and non-Western music by jazz musicians, particularly saxophone legend John Coltrane, took hold.

Coltrane "was really interested in Indian music and Afro-Cuban music," Austerlitz says. "He started the ball rolling on that back in 1961. . . .

"He really researched; he was an intellectual, he really studied this stuff. And that was way before most universities had ethnomusicology programs, and before that term 'world music' really existed."

There was also a more personal connection: "I started spending time in the Dominican Republic, and I was really taken by the culture. I almost tried to integrate myself into Dominican culture, because the people were so warm and hospitable."

Austerlitz decided against going to a music school or conservatory, instead getting a Ph.D. in ethnomusicology -- the comparative study of the musics of different cultures -- from Wesleyan University. "I wanted to have the interdisciplinary approach, so I'd be able to do research as well as playing and composing."

And he has. His academic and performance careers have taken him to the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Cuba, Brazil, Venezuela and Finland. And wherever he goes, he brings both hats with him.

"During my research trips, I've always performed with people, and during my performing trips, I've always done research. So they really feed on each other."

Austerlitz's music is an amalgamation of the places he's been and the music he's studied. On his 1998 record A Bass Clarinet in Santo Domingo and Detroit, Latin rhythms and percussion abound; harmonies range from straightforward to shimmering, and Austerlitz's fleet-fingered horn takes turns between fiery traditional playing and slightly atonal, didjeridoo-style takes on Ellington's "Sophisticated Lady" and Austerlitz's original "Rainb Ow Pill Ow."

"Most of my work centers on the bass clarinet, and it comes out of a free-improvisation background, and I bring it together with a Caribbean influence. . . .

"The music I play is categorized as jazz, and I don't have any problem with that, but I call it 'Afro-universal, creative-improvised music.' Because it's based in the African-American tradition, but it's really become universal. People all over the world play it, and of course people of all races have always played it in the United States. And it is improvised."

As well as jazz and Latin music, Austerlitz has studied South Indian classical music, Indonesian music and 20th-century classical music, particularly Stravinsky (whom Austerlitz ranks with Coltrane at the top of his composing-influences list). "So in my own music, I might take something from South Indian music, and I might blend it with something from Debussy, with an African rhythm, and blend that with something from didjeridoo music from Australia."

Austerlitz plays with various groups a few times a week, and with his own band, Real People, about once a month, usually at Brown or another university. Starting March 20, he and the band will do three three consecutive Sunday-afternoons at 3 p.m., at the Providence Black Rep, sponsored by the McColl Johnson Fellowship.

They also have two shows in mid-April as part of the regular Friday-night jazz series at the Black Rep. Austerlitz is also "like the moderator" at the Thursday-evening jam sessions at the theater, where he plays with a DJ and several other musicians.

Austerlitz plans to use the fellowship money to record an album with Real People and another with poet and Brown professor Michael Harper, a former Rhode Island poet laureate, with whom he's already recorded two jazz-poetry collaborations. The Sunday-afternoon Real People shows at the Black Rep will be like rehearsals for that group's recording, Austerlitz says; the lineup and repertoire will be the same as on the album.

He also plans to bolster "the business side of composing work," most notably in promotion. Right now, his music is on the Web sites of three record companies (Engine Studios, X-Dot and his current home, Innova Records), as well as Brown's site, so he's looking to develop his own Web presence.

The fellowship "allows me to do things as a composer that I wasn't able to do before. It gives me a shot in the arm."