Vinny Golia continues to enable young talent It may surprise - or even shock - jazz fans that multi-reed player Vinny Golia's Wednesday night residence at the Blue Whale this month is a celebration of his Nine Winds label's 35th anniversary. Nobody will be surprised to learn that the composer-bandleader is giving over those nights to the music of worthy young players. Since the Bronx native first moved to Los Angeles in 1973, Golia has been a collaborative artist. As a developing multi-instrumentalist, he made strong and lasting connections to several pockets of avant-garde and new music musicians around the Southland. His ongoing Large Ensemble concerts (begun in 1982) have pulled together players from different areas and disciplines, occasioning many first-time meetings and lasting collaborations. Though Tom Albach's Nimbus Records had begun recording Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra avatar Horace Tapscott in the 1970s, there were no labels in Southern California to otherwise document the vital new music scene in L.A. Golia inaugurated Nine Winds with 1977's "Spirits in Fellowship" and has used the label over the years to disseminate his own ever-expanding compositions and formats (the "Music for Like Instruments" series has releases for clarinet, flute and Ef saxophone music), and to showcase other deserving musicians. Nine Winds refers to the Golia horn arsenal, which has since multiplied exponentially. Before moving west, he'd been a painter of some renown in New York City (that's Golia's painting on the cover of Chick Corea's 1970 "The Song of Singing" album), exploring the saxophone for himself. A visit to Los Angeles in 1971 prompted him to return permanently two years later. The elders of L.A. new music - clarinetist John Carter, cornetist Bobby Bradford and pianist Tapscott - were all welcoming to the developing reed omnivore. Golia's been teaching at California Institute of the Arts since 1999, and he acknowledges that it's a great blessing - both as income security and for the continual stimulation of the students. The Blue Whale series is an outgrowth of associations he's formed with former students. "There was a bunch of young players that I played with at school," he says. They said, 'We have all these ideas for projects that we'd like to record.' I told them that Nine Winds was not a moneymaking operation. They said, 'That's OK; we just want them to be released.' They pursued everything for their recordings and secured the Blue Whale residency. They did all the work, so I thought that they should be featured. Saxophonist Jonathan Armstrong plays in the Vinny Golia Sextet; he learned of Golia's music in his native Seattle. "A guy up there named Jay Easton," Armstrong says, "is sort of the Bizarro Vinny Golia, with a huge menagerie of instruments. He let me borrow Vinny's albums and told me he taught at CalArts. Vinny's a big reason as to why I went there. Armstrong likes the individual attention Golia gives his students: "He's not interested in turning out a Vinny Golia School of Players. Vinny gives you very good critical feedback about what you're doing; he's a phenomenal mechanic. He's also an amazing improviser who can play whatever he hears. A lot of recent CalArts grads are very inspired by Vinny. We've done a lot of listening to the Nine Winds catalog, and talked a lot about a retrospective. The Blue Whale series - which has two groups each night - is a good step in that direction. The last night, June 27, will have a 20-piece version of the Large Ensemble. Reed player Brian Walsh is part of Golia's new octet recording. As a youngster in La Crescenta, his life was changed by a duo recital by Golia and guitarist Nels Cline. "Just the way they used sound," Walsh recalls, "was something I'd never heard before, and I'd heard a lot of jazz." Continuing, he says, "Vinny's an enormous influence on us. He wants to push things forward at all times. Golia, 66, has thought a little about what Los Angeles has afforded him as an artist. "I've had some very rich moments here, and some not so rich," he says. I got a lot of encouragement from John and Bob and Horace, and I learned so much from them. L.A. gave me the opportunity to hunker down and become more of who I am than if I had lived any place else. I never could've had my Large Ensemble, for instance. I had tried to assemble one when I went back to New York and it's impossible. People were so busy hustling for gigs that they couldn't make rehearsals. They sent subs, and the subs sent subs; it was a mess. My one regret about the series is that I wanted Bobby Bradford to play on the Large Ensemble night, but he's traveling with his family. That would have been a good way to reference my history; Bob's one of my favorite musicians. Still, it's a minor caveat, considering. "I'm very fortunate," Golia states, "in many ways." Vinny Golia Where: Blue Whale, 123 Astronaut E.S. Onizuka St. Suite 301, L.A. When: Wednesdays in June at 9 p.m. Info: (213) 620-0908; bluewhalemusic.com