Ridin’ The Reeds With Tom Chapinby Gene Santoro, Daily News, January 26, 1994

If you ride with reedman Thomas Chapin around jazz’ roomy sonic map, getting there is much more than half the fun. It’s the point.

He can play so hard it sometimes seems like his alto sax will either catch fire or leap out of his hands. Then he’ll turn around and unreel a gorgeous, glowing melody.

“There are a lot of different ways to structure your life and your music,” says Chapin. “Some people need to define what they are. I don’t. For me, it’s not a matter of negating things. It’s about accepting all that’s out there and selecting.

“One day last week,” he explains, “I worked with Mario Bauza’s Afro-Cuban Orchestra, recorded a demo tape of flamenco with a chamber ensemble for a Spanish dance company, and played Brazilian jazz with Avantango at the Nuyorican Poets Café.”

So it’s natural that this restless musical explorer is taking off in two different, if complementary, musical directions over the next few days. Tonight, he leads an edge-city trio – bassist Mario Pavone and drummer Michael Sarin – at the Knitting Factory. Next week at the Village Gate, he fronts a mainstream quartet, with pianist Allan Farnham or Pete Madsen (on different nights), bassist Kyoto Fujiwara and drummer Reggie Nicholson.

Chapin has the background to give his adventurousness real substance. After playing everything from classical and country music to R & B and rock, he got hooked on jazz as a teenager, when he heard the formidable multi-reedman Roland Kirk.

Armed with a degree in composition from Rutgers and training at the prestigious Hartt School of Music, Chapin first spread his wings with Lionel Hampton’s band, where he was music director from 1981 to 1986.

Leaving Hamp to tour with Chico Hamilton, Chapin began focusing on his own musical ideas and leading his own groups consistently in the late 1980s.

Of the trio, which began in 1989, he says: “The situation there is very freely harmonic. It’s the place where I give my imagination free rein.”

At the Gate, his quartet will mix material from its recent fine release, “I’ve Got Your Number” (Arabesque Jazz), with other straightahead stuff.

“We all have multiple aspects,” he says, “and for me they come out in what I play.”