ROUTE CAUSE: Moncur came to free jazz only after years of playing hard bop.

"I really started to throw in the towel about five or six times. That's how bad it was," says Moncur, the frustration of having to relearn his instrument evident in his voice. "I had to start totally from the beginning just to get my sound back. For me to be able to control it and to be able to do what I knew I was supposed to do with that sucker and to sustain that shit, it took so goddamn long, I swear to god, I couldn't believe it. And I wasn't gonna do nothing until I could do that."

On Monday, Moncur continues his long association with Philly vibraphonist Khan Jamal in a trio show at Penn (completed by Sun Ra Arkestra tenorist Yahya Abdul-Majid). Given the unconventional lineup, this set will likely venture further out than Moncur's quintet performance at New York's Vision Festival this past June, which also included Jamal. That show, which featured renditions of Miles Davis' "So What" and Wayne Shorter's "Footprints," was surprisingly traditional given Moncur's history with the jazz avant-garde and the context of the experimental festival.

But Moncur came to free jazz only after spending a considerable amount of time playing hard bop, including a famed stint with Jackie McLean. His father was a bassist with the Savoy Sultans, house band of the legendary Harlem nightclub, and gave Moncur his first trombone after his initial gift, a cello, didn't hold the youngster's attention.

"I got hooked on the music because I heard a record by Lester Young when I was a kid, and that shit just fucked my mind up," Moncur recalls. Once he picked up the trombone, his father couldn't get him to stop practicing. He latched onto the music of J.J. Johnson, who remained his major influence until many years later, when he first began hearing the music of the avant-garde.

"There was a lot of controversy about it," Moncur says of the new music. "I said, 'Oh, wait a minute, man, this stuff is interesting, and there's no other trombone player exploring it, so I might as well extend myself towards it.' I didn't cut my other roots off, I didn't alienate myself from anything, I just wanted to be able to deal with any type of musical situation that I liked."

That musical open-mindedness continues, to the extent that Moncur expresses the desire to assemble and train a group of young people into "the hippest marching band," which would perform traditional Sousa marches alongside the trombonist's own compositions. Despite his recent struggles, he retains the desire to explore new avenues. "I'm glad I took the pains, and when you get as old as me and you still have the enthusiasm, that's a blessing right there."

(s_brady@citypaper.net)