Charles McPherson, jazz sax great coming off banner year, will play 82nd birthday concert Saturday

What happens when all your European and North American concerts and tours fall through because of the worldwide coronavirus pandemic?

For alto saxophone great Charles McPherson, there have been multiple answers. They include: winning two major national honors; recording and teaching online; performing the first drive-in jazz concert ever held in San Diego; and — seven days a week, without fail — tirelessly practicing.

“Like many people, I’ve lost a lot of work, but I have not lost one ounce of passion for music. It’s just as enjoyable to me now as when I was 22,” said the longtime Talmadge resident, whose sold-out 82nd birthday concert takes place Saturday at Queen Bee’s Art & Cultural Center in North Park.

“The phenomenon of playing music is still right up there for me.”

That contention was readily happily borne out at his terrific May 17 livestreamed duo concert with pianist Randy Porter at the Athenaeum Music & Arts Library in La Jolla.

It included selections from McPherson’s sublime 2020 album, “Jazz Dance Suites,” which was inspired by and dedicated to his daughter, Camille, 28. She is a featured soloist with the San Diego Ballet, for whom her father has been the composer-in-residence since 2015.

“Jazz Dance Suites” earned him Album of the Year and Artist of the Year honors in the annual Jazz Times readers’ poll. Buzz is now building about a possible Grammy nomination.

The album showcases McPherson equally as a composer, band leader, soloist and ensemble player whose artistic command and imagination grow greater with each passing year. That command will be on display at Queen Bee’s, where he’ll lead a band that features 2021 Grammy Award winner John Beasley on piano and such top San Diego artists as trumpeter Gilbert Castellanos, bassist Rob Thorsen and drummer Tyler Kreutel.

“I would pay to play with Charles!” said the Los Angeles-based Beasley, whose 2020 Hollywood Bowl concert with McPherson fell through because of the pandemic. The two perform together on Beasley’s upcoming big-band album, “Bird Lives,” an all-star Charlie Parker tribute due out this fall.

“Charles is so intelligent and curious, and he keeps evolving,” the pianist continued. “It’s amazing to see the arc of his artistry from the 1960s to now. You can put him in any musical situation, and he’ll sound great.”

“Charles is the definitive master of the alto saxophone,” agreed fellow alto player Charlie Arbelaez, Queen Bee’s director of music programming. “I’ve taken lessons from him and he is so prolific and inspiring.”

In 2019, McPherson performed his 80th birthday concert at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York. While disappointed he has been unable to tour since early last year, he has used the extra time to hone his skills by practicing relentlessly.

“You can approach it so that you can be the boss of the saxophone, and not the saxophone the boss of you,” said McPherson, whose practice regimen includes performing full solo concerts even though no audience is present.

“To be highly successful, you must have a high level of craft and artistry not shackled by time, space or physics. That is what I’m trying very much to do, to be in that zone, that area of free-flowing, stream of consciousness ideas and to be able to access that.

“That is the ultimate for me — technique, head, heart, intuition, feeling, left brain, right brain — doing everything together as homogeneously as possible.”

Charles McPherson’s 82nd Birthday Celebration Concert

When: 7 p.m. Saturday

Where: Queen Bee’s Art & Cultural Center, 3925 Ohio St., North Park

Tickets: Sold out

Phone: (619) 255-5147

Online: queenbeessd.com