THE career of US composer/pianist Donal Fox has daringly straddled two traditions — Western classical music and African-American jazz and blues. Born in l952 in Boston, Massachusetts, into an artistic home where the music of Bach, Stravinsky, Charlie Parker and Miles Davis got equal hearing, his career is the story of bridging that cultural divide.Now Bermudians will have the opportunity to hear Mr. Fox’s unique and captivating fusion of musical influences when he performs at musician Charles Bascome’s annual Evening of Jazz concerts at City Hall on March 9 and 10.

Being held under the patronage of Premier Dr. Ewart Brown and Mrs. Wanda Brown, Mr. Fox will be appearing in Bermuda along with bass player John Lockwood and acclaimed jazz drummer Terri Lyne Carrington, who has performed and recorded with such diverse artists as Stevie Wonder, Joni Mithcell and Herbie Hancock.

Mr. Fox received early training in the Western classical piano repertoire at the New England Conservatory of Music, but began rebelling early. He began composing in mixed idioms of jazz and classical as a teenager, studied at Boston’s famous “jazz college,” Berklee and, at 17, received a scholarship to study at the Tanglewood Music Center, summer home to the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Mr. Fox continued to study composition and theory under an impressive series of tutors. One of them, Gunther Schuller, had early on proposed the blending of jazz and European classical idioms in a concept he called “Third Stream.” Another early teacher was T. J. Anderson, who shared not only Mr. Fox’s African-American background, but an equal interest in drawing techniques from varied traditions.

Mr. Fox’s Refutation and Hypothesis I, A Treatise for Piano Solo (1981), established him as an accomplished composer —- one who could draw not only on the standard repertoire of the Western classical tradition, from Bach and the German romantics to the great modernists Stravinsky, Bartok, Schoenberg, and Cage, but also on jazz’s improvisational discipline and the shouts and field hollers of the blues.

Mr. Fox’s performances of that piece also clearly established him as a virtuoso pianist. He executed speedy, complexly written passages with crystal clear articulation and demonstrative physical force.

He could play with jazz feeling but also had a Chopinesque sense of the instrument’s tonal range and color that was uncommon for a jazz pianist in the post-bop era. What’s more, the score’s call for spontaneous shouts, body-slaps, even cursing, drew on Fox’s unique emotional resources as a performer.

It’s safe to say that Mr. Fox’s early performances of Refutation and Hypothesis I <$>(later revised for piano and chamber orchestra) shook up some traditional concert hall audiences.

In 1990, Mr. Fox began a series of collaborations that originated in Boston and were soon stunning audiences throughout the world. In August of 1990, Mr. Fox collaborated with the saxophonist/composer Oliver Lake, a founding member with David Murray of the World Saxophone Quartet.

Their performance of original compositions and spontaneous improvisations at Cambridge’s Regattabar Jazz Club was recorded and later released by Music and Arts as Boston Duet>. Other collaborations in the series followed. Mr. Fox performed with Murray, with the saxophonists Billy Pierce, John Stubblefield, and the poet Quincy Troupe. Several of these performances were recorded and broadcast on PBS television and public radio, including the Branford Marsalis-hosted JazzSe$>. Concurrently, Mr. Fox was composer-in-residence for two seasons of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (1991-1993), where he worked with the St. Louis Chamber players and was commissioned to write a piano concerto.

He participated in New York’s “Bang on a Can” festival of new music, was invited to perform at the Library of Congress, and composed Gone C<$> for Boston Ballet. Meanwhile, he created a stir in his work with the chamber groups Dinosaur Annex and Boston Musica Viva.

Mr. Fox prepared traditionally trained chamber players for those performances with what he called “playing in the sandbox.” Conducting from the piano, Mr. Fox prodded his colleagues to take the leap into improvisation based on his scores and cues. The performances impressed critics not only with their conceptual daring, but their cohesive integrity.

The tensions in Mr. Fox’s career between two traditions has lead to a unique and original style. When Mr. Fox’s pieces were released on the omnibus composers’ album Videmus, the Pulitzer Prize winning critic Lloyd Schwartz wrote, “Mr. Fox is one of the most exciting musical personalities on the current scene. His four pieces are dazzlingly performed (or improvised) by the composer alone or with the marvelous young clarinetist Eric Thomas or the great alto-saxophonist Oliver Lake. The entire album achieves a vivid, even uncanny coherence <\m> really an entire new and powerful work in itself.”

Tickets for the Evening of Jazz concerts will be available at $65 (patrons) and $50 on-line at www.boxoffice.bm and at the People’s Pharmacy and the 27th Century Boutique. Part proceeds from the shows will be donated to the Charles Bascome Music Scholarship.

lFor further information contact Mr. Bascome at 234-0453 or 334-9255.