It's playtime for Seattle trombonist-didjeriduist Stuart Dempster

Oh, to be 74 years old and still starting, joining and sitting in with new bands.

That's what Seattle trombonist-didjeriduist Stuart Dempster has been up to lately. Not only is he performing with a variety of players in a variety of venues, but his recording career has continued apace. And he's been garnering some unusual awards recognition, too.

Last month he received The International Trombone Association's Lifetime Achievement Award. And this past February, he was given a 2009 Golden Ear Award that placed him in the Seattle Jazz Hall of Fame.

On Thursday he'll be joining trombonist Greg Powers on his brass didjeridu for an evening of ragas derived from the Dhrupad vocal tradition of eastern India (with Powers' trombone taking on the role of human voice). The duo, called Pran, has a new CD out, "Traveler's Todi," recorded live at Seattle's Traveler's Tea Company.

In January 2011, Dempster and the Deep Listening Band (his collaboration with accordionist Pauline Oliveros and keyboardist David Gamper) will be in residence at Town Hall Seattle in a project co-sponsored by the University of Washington's DXARTS (Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media). Dempster also regularly sits in with Ask the Ages, a newly formed jazz quartet that builds on the electro-jazz legacy of Sun Ra and "Bitches Brew"-era Miles Davis.

This isn't the career projectory you'd expect from a fellow who in his early years was first trombonist in the Oakland Symphony and, prior to that, a player in the Seventh Army Symphony ("a bunch of major orchestra people," Dempster explains, "who were drafted into the Army").

Did Dempster ever see this late phase in his musical career coming?

"Oh no — you can't imagine these things," he said during an interview in his North Seattle home last month.

The Earshot Jazz Award seems to have taken him especially by surprise. Even though he played paying big-band gigs as a teenager in Richmond, Calif., he never saw himself as "a particularly good jazz improvisor. I knew that I was really a symphonic-head."

Dempster, told by a friend that the Earshot award paid tribute to his having made "fun and weird stuff safe to do in Seattle," was fairly flummoxed by the honor: "I had no idea that I had polluted people to that extent."

The Pran concert on Thursday is the product of a long association between Powers and Dempster. Powers studied with Dempster in the 1980s. "Long after he was a student with me," Dempster says, "he got interested in ethnomusicology ... and specifically music of India and Dhrupad. It's one of the oldest vocal styles in India."

Powers at first was using a harmonium to provide the background drone to his trombone improvisations, before turning to Dempster for an alternative on the brass didjeridu. The instrument, Dempster says, provides "a floating undercurrent of energy" for Powers' solos to waft over. "It's a wonderful sound, and it really matches with the trombone."

Other projects on Dempster's radar: "Flight Patterns," a new CD out in September, recorded with Open Graves (percussionist Paul Kikuchi and multi-instrumentalist Jesse Olsen) in the Cistern at Port Townsend, where many of Dempster's projects have been recorded. Then there's his recent contribution to "Monoliths and Dimensions," the new CD by "doom drone" outfit, Sunn O))).

"I kind of hate to call it a rock group, but I guess it's under that larger genre.... It's all kind of new to me. I end up with everything. It's been that way all my life. I'm kind of a crossover guy from before I knew what it was."

As for the Deep Listening Band, they still get together once or twice a year. Each member has "more and more independent activities going on," Dempster says. The January gig will be a rare chance for Seattleites to hear them live in concert. It should be "quite special," Dempster speculates, "because we use fairly sophisticated electronics for that."

While he looks forward to the Town Hall residency, Dempster has a deep fondness for the scene that composer-musician Steve Peters has put together at the Good Shepherd Center's Chapel Performance Space, where Pran will perform.

"It's been an absolute haven," Dempster enthuses, "a refuge for all of us no-goods. ... It seems to connect with audience and performer alike."

With all these projects, Dempster seems nimbly to be following his own motto: "Put the 'play' back into playing music."

Michael Upchurch: mupchurch@seattletimes.com