Jazz traditions from around the world came to SF State last week, bringing cow bones, tubas and huge taiko drums with them.

Renowned saxophonist Francis Wong was kicking off a celebration of 20 years of his work in musical community outreach with ImprovisAsians!, a series of seminars and performances on SF State’s campus.

Wong and a host of collaborators played in Knuth Hall and in classrooms throughout the week, and spoke to students about bringing music to people’s lives.

Wong performed to a crowd of about 70 students in Knuth Hall on April 18 together with SF State music graduate John-Carlos Perea and associate music professor Hafez Modirzadeh, who coordinated most of the week-long program for the university.

The performance included a traditional geisha-style Japanese dance, spoken word, thunderous taiko drumming, jazz improvisaion and Perea's powwow vocals.

They were joined on stage by SF State music students Michael Shiono on the electric bass and Salar Nader sitting cross-legged in the middle, playing a small pair of Indian tabla drums. Nader tapped the drums rapidly with his fingers, showing a stark contrast to the booming taiko drum rhythms earlier in the set with a skittering, softer sound, like rain falling on a rooftop.

“I dug it,” said music major Ken Wills, 38, of the hour-long show. “It was aesthetically beautiful because of [Takada’s traditional Japanese] dress. And when Hafez and [Wong] started playing off each other, and they were just bobbing their whole bodies up and down, it was animal-like. Just really, really intense.”

Wills said he liked the improvisation theme of the performances.

“I’ve been going to see jazz since I was a kid, and that’s one thing that really makes the art form special. It’s instant composition,” he said.

Modirzadeh echoed that idea. “Part of what people love about this kind of music is that the audience gets to see it come together,” he said. “The music goes through the process of being invented in front of them. What’s usually put together for big crowds is a finished product, but improvising can involve the audience more.”

Wong returned to the stage Friday afternoon as part of the trio Purple Gums, which also includes venerated trumpeter Bobby Bradford, 72, who's played with jazz greats like Ornette Coleman and Eric Dolphy, and tuba player and spoken word performer William Roper.

They played for an hour to about 50 students in the crowd, filling about a quarter of the seats in Knuth Hall. The entire set, Roper told the crowd, was completely improvised.

“We never played that before, and we’ll never play it again,” Roper said from the stage.

Between jams, the group stopped to take a couple questions from the audience. Juliet Blalock, 21, a journalism major, said she was astounded by how they all coordinated while making it up as they went.

“[Roper] was talking about butterflies, and the saxophone came in flitting around – it actually sounded like butterflies,” she said.

They began playing again, and Roper improvised a spoken word sequence about being allergic to watermelon, and having friends give him grief when he turns it down at picnics.

“I thought the spoken word really helped build the rhythm,” said music major Natan Rodriguez, 31. “Speech is music, after all: it has pitch, rhythm, space. It can be excited or somber. You could see the other musicians picking up on the mood from the words and running with it.”

During another piece, Roper produced an instrument shaped like a large leg bone, and played it like a horn through a hose sticking out of one end.

Asked by the audience about it, he said he named the horn Bessie, saying it came from a cow.

“I don’t just play music. I’m also a chef,” Roper said. “I carved this. So many people like to take these bones home and give them to their dogs, and that just didn’t seem right. So I kept it for myself.”

In the closing number, Bradford produced a small brass bowl-shaped instrument, which he rang like a bell. As he struck it, Wong traced its tone precisely on his saxophone, following Bradford’s ringing with a long, swelling drone of the same pitch, so that the ringing of the bowl seemed to produce an amplified, resonant sound.

“What I love about seeing shows like this is that they’ve all gone through several iterations of being musicians,” said Rodriguez. “With all these elements that pay homage to a particular style or school of music, they build something new.”

A former SF State professor specializing in the saxophone, Wong is the founder of Asian Improv aRts (AIR), an organization dedicated to connecting music and other art with local communities.

“California is the 49th or 50th last state in arts spending,” Wong said, “and we advocate for getting back on track. We try really hard to get musicians into residencies in schools, since that connects them with students and helps build the community.

“There’s a very proud, radical tradition at this school that keeps me coming back,” he said.

AIR will continue to celebrate its 20th anniversary throughout 2007. A partial listing of the groups upcoming events is available at www.asianimprov.org.