By LOREN SCHOENBERG

The transmission within D.N.A. of the ability to play the tenor saxophone is a discussion better left to genetic engineers, but whatever gene it is that helps foment the quality of eloquence is one that is certainly present in the human being known to us as Benny Golson. Consider this: When I got him on the phone to discuss the composition he is writing at Juilliard's behest as part of the School's centennial, Golson spontaneously spoke about the benefits of formal jazz education: "The mind is capacious, capable of holding an incalculable amount of information. Now, when I came up, we were flying by the seat of our pants, so to speak. There were no programs, there were no teachers of jazz. All we had—John Coltrane and I, in my living room listening to 78 RPM records, trying to cipher this stuff and eviscerate it and find out what it's all about—was lots of trial and error, lots of running into brick walls and reversing your direction and coming back again. But schools can propel you forward at a great, faster rate of speed—providing you have the axiomatic talent. No talent—no lecture, no school, no program will help. But providing you have that sine qua non, that which is essential to moving ahead to success, then you can. And you can move forward at a faster rate than trying to do it on your own. This day and age reflects that the instructors have also learned before the students, and they're passing it along. This is good. And they have people who come and visit, like me, so that they can rub shoulders with the reality. This is encouraging, when you can look reality in the face and know that the possibility exists in your being there, too, as the future reveals itself."

Benny Golson (Photo by Lisa Stein)

The world has always been full of artists who can talk a good game about their work; indeed, the talk is sometimes superior to the art in question. But in Golson's case, they are equal partners in a sensibility that places an emphasis on a kind of musical and verbal literacy that seems to be vanishing from our society at an alarming rate. Fortunately for our community, Mr. Golson will be leading the Juilliard Jazz Orchestra in a concert of his original music on February 9 and, in the rehearsals leading up to the performance, providing the kind of mentorship that is unique to the jazz idiom. The line between composition and improvisation merges during every jazz performance, and Golson is a master in the tradition of his mentors—Tadd Dameron, Duke Ellington, and Benny Carter—at being able to craft the kind of music that retains its structural integrity while also allowing the fluid elements inherent in jazz to blossom.

When you encounter Benny Golson, he exudes a warmth and feeling of inner security that sets one immediately at ease, as does his music. Perhaps part of the roots of this phenomenon can be found in the musical epiphany that set him at first reeling, and then determinedly on a musical path that has taken him from his native Philadelphia to New York to Hollywood and around the world—a journey that would have made him the envy of Phileas Fogg. It was almost 61 years ago when the 16-year-old Golson, along with his childhood pal John Coltrane, heard Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie split the jazz atom in one of their very first concert appearances. The experience rattled their musical world, but the two young saxophonists found themselves welcomed and encouraged by Bird and Diz, the latter later hiring both of them as featured players in his band.

The experience of encountering musical prejudice in his college years at Howard University has only strengthened Golson's resolve to reach out to young players. As he told The Juilliard Journal recently: "I came with my saxophone under my arm, and they looked around, said, 'Where's your clarinet?' They didn't want to know about saxophone. So everything I did while I was there was the clarinet. I had to practice my saxophone in the laundry room at night. They told me if I got caught playing any jazz, I would be expelled! I mean, that's how rigid it was then. And of course, I wondered why I was there, at that point. And I played my gigs and snuck in at night over the back wall, and things like that. Practiced early in the morning, before anybody came to the practice rooms—like, 6:30, 7 in the morning. It was a really clandestine kind of thing. Now they brought me back there, and honored me, and instituted a scholarship in my name, the Benny Golson Scholarship. And I said, 'Well, strange things do happen, after all.'"

Juilliard Jazz Orchestra Victor L. Goines, conductor Benny Golson, saxophone Alice Tully Hall Thursday, Feb. 9, 8 p.m. For ticket information, please see the calendar.

One of the elements that is the most instantaneously fetching in Golson's music is its melodic quality. Granted, there are few more subjective topics in music than what it is that constitutes a "good" melody, but based on the tremendous popularity of Golson's music, clearly there are large groups of people on this planet for whom his sophisticated merging of harmony, rhythm, and melody not only work, but work well. It's hard to imagine any society in which Western sounds have infiltrated themselves where Golson's "Killer Joe," in its famous Quincy Jones version, will not quickly set fingers snapping and toes tapping. Then there are the many jazz originals ("Along Came Betty," "Stablemates," "Whisper Not," for starters) that show up with frequency in the repertoires of musicians young and old. And if you ever saw the TV shows It Takes a Thief, Mission Impossible, or Mannix, you heard some of Golson's work. There is slightly more than a glimpse of the Golson magic in the Steven Speilberg/Tom Hanks film The Terminal, where his presence in the famous Great Day in Harlem photograph taken for Esquire magazine in 1958, and recently celebrated in the eponymous Academy-Award nominated documentary, make him the object of Hanks's American sojourn. But why settle for a glimpse when Mr. Golson in all his glory can be found in these very halls?

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