Al Di Meola

Ever go to a jazz show and have a pop concert break out? Pardon the reference to the old joke about hockey games and boxing, but that's sort of what happened at Wednesday's Corea, Clarke and White show at the Hollywood Bowl. At the second reunion in as many years of the original members of '70s fusion favorites Return to Forever (Chick Corea, Stanley Clarke and Lenny White), the group was midway through a Chaka Khan-led cover of the Gershwin standard "I Loves You Porgy" when a black-clad Stevie Wonder was led to the stage.

The 1986 Playboy Jazz Festival will feature a strong lineup of both old and unfamiliar names, many of them new to the festival and some making their first Los Angeles appearance. It will be June 14 and 15 at Hollywood Bowl. The Herbie Hancock Quartet will include saxophonist Branford Marsalis, Ron Carter on bass and Al Foster on drums, plus a guest appearance by guitarist George Benson.

Fresh off a tour with Chick Corea's Elektric Band, which played Sound FX in San Diego earlier this month, bassist John Patitucci and saxman Eric Marienthal return for three nights at the Jazz Note (860 Garnet Ave., above Diego's restaurant) in Pacific Beach this week. Billed as the Eric Marienthal Band, the group will also include pianist John Beasley and drummer Tom Brechtlien.

Joaquin Rodrigo was hardly a musical radical. He founded no stylistic school, had no disciples and at the end of a long and productive life was regarded as something of a regressive cultural drag by younger Spanish composers. But he left an enduring popular legacy. It is founded on the guitar--solos, songs, chamber music and concertos, above all the "Concierto de Aranjuez."

The Philharmonic Society of Orange County will expand both the number of concerts and range of music it offers in a 1996-97 season that delves deeper than ever into jazz and world music. In addition, its classical offerings are top-heavy with big names, including the Vienna Philharmonic under Daniel Barenboim, making exclusive West Coast appearances for the society, rising Welsh baritone Bryn Terfel and solo piano recitals by composer Philip Glass and Ivo Pogorelich.

Don't ask Jamie Glaser to stand still. Sitting in a chair, talking, his brown eyes flash; his body moves animatedly. Then give him his guitar, and even with the instrument unplugged as he poses for a photograph, Glaser bends forward, leans back, keeps a patter going with his feet, smiles, mugs. He's kinetic energy personified.

Drummer Tony Williams is living proof that you don't have to forsake melodies or a beat to make a new musical statement. Williams, who plays the City College Theater with his acoustic quintet at 8 p.m. Monday in a show co-presented by KSDS-FM (88.3) and the San Diego Jazz Festival, uses his raw talent to create within the limits of straight-ahead jazz. A child prodigy who was playing drums in Boston clubs with his saxophonist father before his teens, Williams went to New York to join Jackie McLean's band when he was only 16. With bassist Ron Carter and pianist Herbie Hancock, Williams completed the rhythm section that propelled trumpeter Miles Davis through such seminal '60s albums as "In a Silent Way," "Miles in the Sky" and "Miles Smiles," albums that marked the birth of the rock/jazz marriage known today as fusion.

Record labels may not require brick-and-mortar buildings anymore, but Grammy-winning bass legend Stanley Clarke knows that it still takes a strong foundation to build one. Maybe that's why the idea of naming one after his old high school sounded so appealing. "It was all-stone, like you were walking into a government building," Clarke said. "Just a solid piece of granite. " While attending Roxborough High School in Philadelphia in the late '60s, Clarke, 59, spent hours toiling on the bass, practicing with school bands in between schoolwork and basketball practice.

From adolescence, guitarist Tosin Abasi knew he was different. For one, there's the name. But that wasn't all there was to it. "I was a bit of an outsider," says Abasi, 29. "Especially to be a black kid playing guitar and skateboarding. I would bleach my hair blond, paint my fingernails and wear really weird clothes. Where I'm from [suburban Maryland], it was kind of odd. " His Washington, D.C., progressive metal band, Animals as Leaders (so named because humans have blown the gig)