By LOREN SCHOENBERG

The saxophone came into its glory in the early 20th century as a jazz instrument. Two groundbreaking sax players were Coleman Hawkins (above) and John Coltrane (below). (Photo of Hawkins © William P. Gottlieb; www.jazzphotos.com; photo of Coltrane by Roger Kasparian, courtesy of Fujioka)

The saxophone and jazz go together. No instrument evokes the essence of this quintessentially American idiom more quickly than this Belgian product of the mid-19th century. At first relegated to second (if that) status in the orchestral world, the instrument eventually found its own voice here. Yes, there were European masters such as Marcel Mule, who played the saxophone almost as if it were a string instrument, but the great innovations and virtual reinventions of the instrument were made by African-American musicians over the course of the 20th century. To this day, you can trace most jazz saxophonists to at least one of these four men: Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Charlie Parker, and John Coltrane. Although the music they created contrasted greatly, close examination reveals a clear chain of influence among them. Don't you wish you were around in the early '50s, when you could have heard each one of them near or close to their peak? Luckily, jazz's evolution has been extremely well documented on recordings. For starters, each one of our four stars recorded "Body and Soul": Hawkins, Young, and Coltrane in famous studio versions, and Parker, more informally, twice as a young man and then once at a Swedish jam session. They make for a fascinating comparison.

Hawkins (1904-1969) was born in St. Joseph, Mo., into a determinedly middle class background and played the cello as a youth. He had a lifelong love affair with the music of Bach and carried Casal's recordings with him when he expatriated to Europe in 1934. Famous for his harmonic legerdemain, Hawkins could spin chorus after chorus in the manner of the "Goldberg" Variations combined with a large dollop of the blues. When he returned to the States in 1939, he wasted little time in recording "Body and Soul," which quickly became as much a staple in the jazz repertoire as the Beethoven piano sonatas became for pianists. What was astonishing was that the record sold extremely well, though the melody is never explicitly stated; it's concealed in a virtuosic web of variations. It became such a totem than Hawkins's polar opposite, Lester Young (1909-1959), recorded his own meditation on it in 1942 with Nat "King" Cole on piano (regardless of his singing, Cole was one of the best jazz pianists ever). Young, at the time an unknown, had taken Hawkins's place in the Fletcher Henderson band when Hawkins went to Europe. He was laughed out of the band—it seems New York wasn't ready for such a radical reinterpretation of not only the tenor saxophone but of the idiom itself. Where Hawkins created a Dionysian landscape, Young reflected on his passion with Apollonian reserve. The former sounded as though he were bursting at the seams, exhausting every nook and cranny of song's harmonic underpinning; the latter took the melody at its word and wasn't at all concerned with paying obeisance to the chords for their sake alone. But their biggest difference came in the realm of rhythm: Hawkins dug deep down to the bottom of the beat, whereas Young floated in an almost metaphysical fashion.

The Voice of the Saxophone Juilliard Jazz Ensemble with Vincent Herring Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola Broadway at 60th Street Monday, December 11, 7:30 and 9:30 p.m. $15 cover; students $10. (Students pay $10 any night with student ID) Call (212) 258-9595 for information and reservations. Please see the Jazz at Lincoln Center Calendar of Events for more information.

When Young reappeared in New York in late 1936 with Count Basie's band, he soon enough became the idol of a new generation of players, the leading light of which was Charlie Parker (1920-1955). But Parker—who played the alto saxophone (though he dabbled on the tenor for a hot moment)—didn't limit himself to practitioners of just alto; his genius was to take liberal amounts of both Young and Hawkins and his acolytes, eventually arriving at a style that was at once avant-garde and bluesified. Parker played faster and more ferociously than had ever been imagined, yet he could also play a ballad with as much tenderness as Louis Armstrong. Both Hawkins's and trumpeter Roy Eldridge's versions of "Body and Soul" made such an impression on the young Parker that versions recorded in 1940, 1942, and 1950 all contain some reference to them. Parker was to make his stamp on the music world in collaboration with trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie in the mid-'40s, but his personal struggle with addiction forced Gillespie to jettison their partnership. Over the course of the next few years, Gillespie featured several saxophonists, each of whom could capture some part of Parker's overwhelming genius.

Vincent Herring is following in the footsteps of the great sax players. He appears with the Juilliard Jazz Ensemble at Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola on December 11.

One of them was John Coltrane (1926-1967) , who didn't mature mu-sically until he reached his 30s. But when he did, he made up for lost time. His famous studio re-cording of "Body and Soul" was made in 1960 as he was reaching the end of his fascination with traditional, tonal jazz harmony, of which he was a master. It was only at that point that Coltrane evolved to his own musical system, one that still informs much of contemporary jazz. Extended vamps, various permutations of scales (including pentatonic), and quartal harmony were just some of the devices Coltrane experimented with. He eventually found his musical salvation by literally shrieking on his saxophone for extended periods of time.

The challenge facing post-Coltrane saxophonists is how to find your own voice while still respecting the tradition. One master who has thrived in a wide variety of settings and yet kept his own identity intact is Vincent Herring, for two decades a staple of the international jazz scene. An edited version of his résumé includes work with Lionel Hampton's big band, Nat Adderley, Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, the Horace Silver Quintet, Jack DeJohnette's Special Edition, Larry Coryell, Cedar Walton, Freddie Hubbard, Dizzy Gillespie, the Mingus Big Band, Nancy Wilson, the Roy Hargrove Big Band, Arthur Taylor, Billy Taylor, Carla Bley, and Phil Woods Sax Machine, as well as being a special guest soloist with Wynton Marsalis at Lincoln Center. To hear him mix it up at Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola on December 11 with the young lions (and lionesses) currently populating the Juilliard Jazz Ensemble is just the kind of challenging musical situation that the masters who defined the jazz saxophone thrived on. This is one night you don't want to miss!

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