UNLV alumnus Paul Taylor returns as Ham Hall headliner

Saxophonist Paul Taylor’s about to have another “full-circle moment.”

He had one last week at a Southern California recording studio, where he worked with Japanese drummer Akira Jimbo, 18 years after their first collaboration.

Friday night, Taylor marks another “full-circle moment” with a concert at UNLV’s Artemus Ham Hall that brings him back to campus 36 years after he first arrived there on a full music scholarship.

Extending the circle even further, Taylor will be joined on the Ham Hall stage Friday by UNLV’s Latin Jazz Ensemble — and several local musicians who’ll accompany him as he performs music from the 10 CDs he’s recorded during his 18-year career.

Taylor said he’ll definitely play selections from “Tenacity,” his latest album, which was released earlier this year. (Taylor credits manager Andi Howard with the title, which signifies not only that “it’s my 10th album — duh,” but his longevity in the music business.)

The “Tenacity” selections range from the album’s smooth, soulful title tune to the funkier beat of “Empire” and “Open Road,” which pairs Taylor’s sax with keyboards played by his producer and longtime colleague, Dino Esposito.

From there, it’ll run the gamut, Taylor says.

“It’s cool to have 10 CDs to pick and choose from,” he says.

They include 2007’s “Prime Time,” his first No. 1 on Billboard’s Contemporary Jazz Chart. (Among Taylor’s other chart-toppers: the title track from his 2009 album “Burnin’,” which hit No. 1 on the airplay charts; and “Push to Start,” from 2011’s “Prime Time,” which topped the Smooth Jazz Songs chart, while the album went Top 10 on Billboard’s Jazz Albums chart.)

Those successes were in the future when Taylor, 54, arrived at UNLV in the fall of 1978 from his hometown of Denver.

It wasn’t his first visit to campus, however.

As a member of an “all-star city jazz band” in Denver, he got a trip to come to UNLV and visit the school. He said he didn’t really care about Las Vegas’ Sin City reputation. Some of his friends, he remembers, wondered “ ‘Las Vegas? For college? Who goes there for college?’ ”

But Taylor didn’t care.

“I just wanted to go to college,” he says.

As it turned out, Las Vegas proved an ideal launching pad for a career in smooth jazz and its funkier cousin, contemporary urban jazz.

“I love it here in Vegas,” Taylor says. “I thought, why be in L.A.? I can be there in an hour.”

Besides, the rise in digital technology now means “sometimes you don’t have to be right there to record,” he says. “You can do it on the Internet or share files.”

Either way, he says whatever he plays has to speak to him in his heart or intuition. And while his approach to making music hasn’t changed, the business of smooth and urban jazz has.

“It’s still instrumental music, but vocals get a lot more of the attention,” he says. “(Beyond that) we’re fighting to keep the format going,” particularly after radio “overmarketed” and, as a result, “we lost a lot of stations.”

Nowadays, jazz fans have other ways to hear their favorite music, including online and other digital options.

To say nothing of live appearances.

The concert business also has changed, Taylor says, partly because of cost.

“It’s a lot more expensive to bring your own band (on tour),” he says. Consequently, he’s now used to playing with “regional musicians who are already there.”

When Taylor says “there,” he could mean Texas (San Antonio), or Kentucky (Louisville) or Delaware (Rehoboth Beach), to cite three October stops.

“I’m cool with it,” Taylor says of the quick bursts that characterize his recent concert appearances.

With all that travel, “I’ve kind of lost touch with the local scene,” he says, although he still enjoys playing with friends, especially “corporate gigs where I’m not Paul Taylor, I’m just a guy in the band.”

Taylor recalls his “just a guy in the band” days when he was studying at UNLV — and playing gigs around town, including one memorable one at the Charleston Heights bowling alley lounge, on Decatur Boulevard in the future Arizona Charlie’s.

That’s where Taylor and a UNLV classmate he’d spotted in Grant Hall (she worked part-time in the art department office; he took music classes there) first connected and “hit it off,” he recalls.

He and Laronda Tinsley-Taylor married 26 years ago — and live in northwest Las Vegas, not far from their first meeting spot. (She’s the namesake of the fun-and-funky “Laronda,” which is featured on his “Prime Time” CD.)

Their wedding preceded Taylor’s professional breakthrough at a 1994 Catalina Island jazz festival, where he worked with Esposito — and was spotted by Japanese pianist Keiko Matsui.

Taylor played with Matsui’s band for two years; her husband Kazu, a keyboardist and composer, produced Taylor’s debut CD, “On the Horn,” which featured his first No. 1 smooth jazz hit, “ ’Til We Meet Again.”

Beyond his successful solo career, Taylor played with the Rippingtons in 2000 and toured with the all-star “Groovin’ For Grover,” a Grover Washington Jr. tribute that also featured Jeff Lorber, Richard Elliott and Gerald Albright. (Oh, and did we mention that Taylor’s gigs include an on-screen appearance in the ABC soap opera “One Life to Live”?)

Through it all, “it’s been like an evolution,” he says. “Life is an evolution, too.”

Which would seem to guarantee many more of what Taylor terms his “full-circle moments.”

Contact reporter Carol Cling at ccling@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0272.