Yes, many of us have memories of those long-ago, post-school music lessons. The drowsy hour with the dowdy piano instructor, resolutely working through "John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt." Or the guitar teacher at the music shop, wearing his tattered Zappa T-shirt like a Shiloh battle flag and trying to make you learn the octatonic minor scale - when all you want is to play John Mayer's "Your Body is a Wonderland" well enough to dazzle the hottie from algebra.

Well, that's probably not how it worked when post-bop trumpet master Wallace Roney studied at the altar of Miles Davis.

For one, Roney was the only musician ever mentored by Davis. For another, Roney, now 50, was a prodigy and became one of the finest jazz musicians in the world - who still breathes and thinks about Art and spins Music out of his brain like explosions from a Roman candle.

These diverse images came together Thursday afternoon in the Oasis Room of New London's Garde Arts Center. Roney and members of his stunning septet conducted a free clinic for about 20 music students and fans, ranging from elementary school students to actual adults.

It was the third master class sponsored by the Jazz at the Garde Community Fund, organized and hosted by Kate Fioranti, head teacher at the Interdistrict School for Arts and Communication.

Roney and the band played a concert there Thursday night.

The 75-minute clinic consisted of three long pieces performed by the band, remarks on the nature of jazz and its requirements of a musician by Roney and his players, and a Q&A session.

On a very basic level, the idea that these young students and fans were two degrees of separation from Miles Davis is conceptually very cool. That they were in the same room with Wallace Roney was a stunning gift and opportunity.

"(Roney) was actually glad to do it," said Garde director Steve Sigel, describing how he got the musician to participate in the clinic. "I just called him up and asked him. He wanted to know who would be here. When I said area students, he was happy. He has a 14-year-old son who's a musician."

Roney was joined on-stage by his brother, alto saxophonist Antoine Roney, Arnold Lee on tenor sax, bassist Rashaan Carter, drummer Jonathan Barber, and percussionist Shakoor Sanders.

The event started with two whitewater compositions that are being primed for the outfit's next album. The schooled, older jazz enthusiasts nodded intently in time. Some of the kiddos also bopped about rhythmically, as though they'd just ingested huge bowls of Ornette Coleman's Sugar Cereal.

Other kids? Not so much - but not every 4-year-old is going to immediately get it the first time they encounter a free jazz freight train.

Carter smiled at the various reactions he saw from the stage. "My dad played sax and my mom was a jazz disc jockey. When we were kids, we were dragged to plenty of these events when I'd have rather been playing video games or basketball. I was lucky. The idea is to expose young people to jazz before they have been kidnapped by popular culture. We're creating the future of jazz."

Roney was an eloquent and warm spokesman. He proudly introduced and told stories about each of his band members, allowing them to talk about their own introduction to music. It was clear he has a wonderfully paternal affection for them.

Part of that feeling, though, comes from the fraternity of jazz - which is to say it's an extraordinarily demanding art form, and by their mastery and continued devotion to it, the musicians share a multi-faceted bond.

"Playing jazz is about studying and getting better. No matter how good you are, you keep studying," Roney said. He described John Coltrane at a time when he was the finest saxophonist in the world. "'Trane practiced eight hours a day for five years. Then he was much better than he'd been. Five years after that, he was much better than that. You wouldn't have believed he could get any better.

"To play jazz required deep love and respect for the music - as it was at the time of its inception to the very moment of your participation, when you're trying to take it further."

Many questions concerned fairly complex and arcane issues of harmonics, time signatures and theory - almost as though the questioners wanted, like eager pupils, to impress their guests.

At the other end of the spectrum, one small girl raised her hand, stood politely when Roney smiled and pointed at her, and said, "Where's your piano player?"

Indeed, the musician hadn't yet arrived at the venue.

The band laughed and Roney said, "We're trying to figure that out, too."

r.koster@theday.com