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David Benoit: All That Jazz and More

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He combines his musical and personal interests as the music director of the Asia America Symphony Orchestra. It was not the kind of thing that happened to him very often -- at least not back then.

Three decades ago, David Benoit was a Los Angeles jazz pianist in his 20s, with two albums on a small label. He played birthdays, bar mitzvahs and small nightclubs as he struggled to make a living.

But when he was invited to the Philippines to perform in 1981, everything changed. “Somehow over there I was a superstar," Benoit, now 56, recalls with a laugh. “They had all the paparazzi waiting at the airport; it was just like out of a dream."

His song “Take a Look Inside My Heart," largely ignored in the U.S., had become a hit on Filipino radio. “They started screaming when I played the opening to the tune," he said, still a bit incredulous as he sat in a hotel restaurant on Sunset Boulevard. “So for many years, I was this sort of legendary figure there."

In a way, Benoit's career has come full circle. Though best known as a successful if controversial jazz-fusion artist with 30 albums and five Grammy nominations, he is now quietly in his eighth season as music director of the Asia America Symphony Orchestra. And there's a connection to his arrival in Manila: On Saturday, a Filipina who grew up with his music and became a star -- Lea Salonga -- will sing in an AASO concert at the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center's Aratani/Japan America Theatre.

Salonga, best known for her longtime role in “Miss Saigon" in London and on Broadway, covered Benoit's “Land of the Loving" during her early career as a singer. (Interestingly enough, the song has since been used prominently in Philippine Department of Tourism commercials.) Saturday's concert will open with Benoit conducting “Symphonic Dances" from “West Side Story" and present Salonga mostly as a Broadway artist, concluding with Benoit accompanying her on piano.

It is the 65-piece, Rolling Hills Estates-based orchestra's sole full-scale concert of the season. Yet its eclectic mix of genres seems an appropriate way to spotlight Benoit's growing, albeit not well known, interest in classical music.

Lighthouse dawns

Benoit was born in Bakersfield, a place associated more with the country music of Buck Owens than the jazz or Asian themes that would shape his adulthood. But Benoit's early years were informed by his parents' tastes -- his mother's love of Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copland, and his father's fondness for jazz, especially guitarists like Tal Farlow.

When Benoit was 8, his family moved to Hermosa Beach, home of the legendary jazz club the Lighthouse. As a teenager in the '60s and early '70s, Benoit was not much moved by the Rolling Stones ("not enough melodic content for me") but saw gigs at the Lighthouse that made him want to commit himself to jazz.

Although he was drawn to the piano, the instrument's more intellectual and bebop-oriented masters such as Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell and Lennie Tristano didn't interest him much. He was attracted instead to Ramsey Lewis, Oscar Peterson and Vince Guaraldi -- players he describes as “melodic, crossing over, with a lot of popularity."

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