Jamaican jazz pianist Monty Alexander takes his music seriously but also keeps it light and bright because he believes an audience should leave a performance with a smile in its collective heart.

"I'm not into those dark melodies, the ones that leave you depressed," Alexander said during a recent telephone conversation. "When I do play something somber or with strange harmonics, I always resolve it so that the piece will leave a pleasant sound in a person's ears."

Thus, Alexander is the antithesis of Miles Davis and other jazz artists who play to please themselves -- Davis often worked with his back to an audience -- rather than who paid to see them perform.

But then Alexander admits that he, like many other jazz musicians, enjoys playing or he wouldn't be doing it. "If the truth be known," Alexander said, "we're getting away with murder -- we're being paid for having fun."

Alexander's upbeat attitude may stem from the fact he was never forced to learn to play a piano. His mother was a wannabe pianist but never did much about it. So, a piano in the family home in Kingston sat idle until Alexander started noodling around on it when he was a kid. And he took piano lessons between the ages of 9 and 12 because he wanted to.

"I had begun to write simple melodies when I was seven. As I was growing up, my father took me to hear the jazz greats playing in local night spots. One of them was Nat Cole and if any one pianist has influenced my playing, it's Nat though I also picked up later on Oscar Peterson, Eddie Heywood and Errol Garner."

Alexander's take on jazz isn't altogether straight ahead because his roots are in what he calls "joyful gospel" and he has combined his appreciation for gospel music with the rhythms of his native country to create a Caribbean blend that is totally his own.

For example, his highly acclaimed Concrete Jungle CD on the Telarc label, an album devoted to the music of Bob Marley, is a mix of jazz and reggae that brings a harmonica and reggae bass into play.

Alexander is no one-man band though he has the talent to be one. Instead, his trio includes Herlin Riley, a drummer with a wonderful sense of showmanship and former timekeeper in the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, and J.J. Wiggins, a sure-handed bassist whose father is noted jazz pianist Gerald Wiggins.

"They don't come much better than that," said Alexander. "All of us are good listeners and I think anyone who has heard one our CDs would agree."

Those attending this weekend's Temecula Valley International Jazz Festival will get a first hand view of the Alexander threesome. It's performing twice Friday evening at the Old Town Temecula Community Theater as the headline act. The husband and wife team of pianist Mike Wofford and flutist Holly Hofmann will open both shows.

Though his sidemen are now top drawer, Alexander admits he sure wasn't traveling in swift company when he formed a high school band, Monty And The Cyclones. "We really didn't know what we were doing -- just having fun and trying to sound like Fats Domino, play a little rock and attract the girls. Mostly attract the girls."

Alexander was 17 when the his family moved from Kingston to Florida, lock, stock and barrel. Two years later he was playing at Jilly's, a posh night club in New York after owner Jilly Rizzo. a pal of Frank Sinatra's, heard Monty performing with the Art Mooney Orchestra in Las Vegas.

The Jilly's connection paid off big time because it put Alexander in the company of vibist Milt Jackson, bassist Ray Brown and Old Blue Eyes, himself. And Monty was later to record will all of them plus other top rank artists and in the case of Brown and Jackson, to play with them on a fairly regular basis.

Though Alexander had put his classical piano training behind him, in '93, he performed Gershwin's "Rhapsody In Blue" with a full symphony orchestra conducted by versatile vocalist Bobby McFerrin.

"I love Gershwin and Bobby is such a talented guy, who wouldn't have fun? I sure did," Alexander said, " But then I have a varied musical taste. I don't consider myself a jazz musician, I think of myself as a pianist who appreciates all kinds of music and that includes the classics as well as jazz."

However, Alexander said he always put his own stamp on anything he plays and recalled a long ago concert in which he paid tribute to one of his heroes, Errol Garner.

"You asked me if I tried to emulate his blocked chord style or just played his music my way," he said. "I can't emulate Errol or any other pianist. It has to be me just as it had to be Errol.

"A musician puts himself or herself into any performance and since I'm not Errol, trying to play a song as he played it with exactly the same feeling would have been impossible."

Alexander has positioned himself as a person wanting to spread all kinds of music to all generations in all parts of the world. So, it was only logical he'd be asked how he would attract teenagers to jazz the way they are attracted to rap and rock.

He had an answer.

"I'm an educator myself and I don't think you can come on to jazz like you would, say, algebra," he said. "You should teach kids that playing jazz is fun, it's improvising, it's doing things their way. There's a mystery to jazz, a world to explore. Most music teachers are too staid; they put too much emphasis on learning to read music and not the joy that comes from listening to and playing jazz.

"I know learning to read music is important but then I think of something Louis Armstrong once said when he was asked if he could read music: 'Yeah, but not good enough to harm my playin.' "

Monty Alexander Trio with Holly Hoffman and Mike Wofford

When: 7 and 9:15 p.m. Friday

Where: Old Town Temecula Community Theater, 42051 Main St., Temecula

Tickets: $35

Info: (866) 653-8696