By LOREN SCHOENBERG

Every art form has its overarching figures through whom its various idioms can be viewed. Louis Armstrong has joined Pablo Picasso, William Shakespeare, William Faulkner, Marlon Brando, George Balanchine, and D.W. Griffith as just such an icon. But there are always the other figures lurking in history's wings, people who played a vital part in the creation of an artistic language, without which the better-known titans would not have been able to develop in the fashion they did. In the fine arts, very little—if anything—has ever come truly out of the ether, and in a concert on December 1 titled "The Origins of Jazz," the Juilliard Jazz Ensembles will shine a much-needed spotlight on a handful of early creators of America's most idiomatic music.

Jelly Roll Morton is one of the early jazz composers to be featured in "The Origins of Jazz" concert.

The pianist and composer Scott Joplin is thought to have invented ragtime. He didn't. What Joplin did do was to bring a refined melodic sensibility and a sophisticated formal sense to a music whose basic profile was rhythmic. In many ways, that's what subsequent generations of jazz musicians have been doing ever since. Indeed, any serious discussion of this music has to deal with the tremendous limitations of the categorizations imposed largely from the music industry and not from the creators of the music itself. Debussy despised the term "Impressionist," Arnold Schoenberg did not want his music to be called "atonal," and Dizzy Gillespie regretted for decades his early use of the term "be-bop." You can be sure that the Juilliard students who will be writing their own arrangements of Joplin's music will not be hamstrung by limiting theories of "authenticity," for Joplin's music was nothing if not contemporary when it was composed, and it will be a treat to hear how these young musicians deal with the challenges it represents today.

The next group of musicians to be honored are all from New Orleans, but each had a unique slant on the polyphonic sounds that emanated from that once (and to many still essentially) French city. The pianist and composer Jelly Roll Morton was the first to capture jazz's flowing essence on manuscript paper, and encouraged his musician's emendations only after they had learned it the way he wrote it. Joe "King" Oliver was the Miles Davis of his day (actually, it was the other way around)—cool, with the ability to exert an overarching concept of understatement while allowing his brilliant sidemen total freedom in an idiom that was determinedly hot.

The soprano saxophonist/clarinetist Sidney Bechet was an exuberant soloist who toured Europe in 1919 while the 18-year-old Louis Armstrong was still unknown outside of the Crescent City. Indeed, it was then that the Swiss conductor Ernst Ansermet (known for his early association with Stravinsky) wrote upon hearing Bechet: "There is with the Southern Syncopated Orchestra an extraordinary virtuoso, the first of his race, I am told, to have composed perfectly elaborated blues on his clarinet ... Here, undoubtedly, was a new style, and its form was striking—abrupt and rugged, with a brusque, merciless ending, as in Bach's second 'Brandenburg' Concerto. I want to mention the name of this genius among musicians, for, personally, I shall never forget it: Sidney Bechet."

Juilliard Jazz Ensembles: The Origins of Jazz Paul Hall Monday, Dec. 1, 8 p.m. For ticket information, please see the calendar.

Edward "Kid" Ory was the leader of a top New Orleans band in the 1910s, and a trombonist whose seemingly rudimentary style belied his mastery as an ensemble player. His place in the jazz pantheon was assured by his presence on Armstrong's seminal Hot Five recordings. In Jabbo Smith, we have an idiosyncratic trumpeter and composer who was both unnerved and inspired by Armstrong's brilliance. He made a series of recordings designed to be in competition with the Armstrong Hot Five's and Hot Seven's (which were recorded between 1925 and 1929) that have lingered too long in relative obscurity.

What is exciting about the upcoming concert are the common denominators that the Juilliard Jazz Ensembles will uncover between these seemingly disparate subjects. But then, that is part of what has made jazz the international music it has become. Jazz players are trained to think, to compose, to edit and create on their feet, and in that sense they are the true legatees of the music's swirling, joyous New Orleans heritage.Who better to assess the past than the bright stars of the future?

Loren Schoenberg, who teaches jazz history, has been on the faculty since 2001.