When the Indiana University School of Music wanted to jazz up its curriculum in 1966, the school's dean approached David Baker, an Indianapolis native with a knack for reinventing things.

As a student at Crispus Attucks High School in the late 1940s, the aspiring trombone player would often sneak into the smoky clubs of Indiana Avenue to soak up the atmosphere and sit in with the sidemen. But after an auto accident damaged his embouchure, he reinvented his career by taking up the cello and composition. When IU called, Baker shifted gears again.

At 76, Baker shows few signs of his age. He's still bursting with energy and expanding his opus list of more than 1,000 compositions, which includes a cell phone concerto that captured worldwide attention in 2006.

After returning recently from Egypt, where he led the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra, Indiana's elder statesman of jazz sat down at his Bloomington studio to improvise at the piano, and share thoughts about his career.

You helped create IU's Jazz Studies program and have been directing it for more than 40 years. What were your criteria for building the curriculum?

My challenge was to put together a jazz degree-granting program. It wasn't until 1968 that we had a degree-granting program, and we were one of the first in the Big Ten. Among other things, the curriculum had to teach the mechanics and disciplines that made up street playing. It's an aural kind of music. We had to teach things like the fundamentals of playing with a rhythm section and being able to call a tune.

Because you're an Indianapolis native, didn't you learn some of those things in the jazz clubs along Indiana Avenue? What do you remember about them?

I grew up in those clubs, from the time I was able to draw a mustache on with an eyebrow pencil and pray it didn't rain. By 1948 or '49, which was my junior year in high school, all of my buddies used to go to the Cotton Club and George's Bar -- you name it. I liked the Walker Theatre, Red Keg (Tavern) and the Missile Room, where (guitarist) Wes (Montgomery) played.

Did you play in some of those clubs yourself?

Oh, yeah. All of them at one time or another, as a trombone player.

You would take your horn from one place to another?

Everywhere.

What did your father do for a living?

He (David Nathaniel Baker Sr.) was a postman. He graduated from Hampton Institute as a carpenter. Civil service jobs were the top jobs for middle-class blacks in those days, but my father (who died in 1964) was always drawing plans.

Tell us about your early years in Indianapolis.

I did all my growing up -- and a lot of people say I didn't grow up, I just got older -- in Indianapolis. I have a lot of memories of the Eastside, going to Public Schools 56 and 26 and then Crispus Attucks (High School).

Was Attucks an influence on your becoming a musician?

We went to Attucks at a time that was very exciting. There was a great tradition of jazz already there by then. We had the crème de la crème of mentors -- a large music department of maybe four, five teachers. In retrospect, it was seemingly the best of all possible worlds.

For years, I've heard a story about a car crash and your switch to cello.

It's a complicated story. I had played at Lake Hamilton with (the late Indianapolis drummer and bandleader) Ray Churchman. We were coming back from a summer job. I was riding in the front seat asleep. When I woke up, I was in the hospital.

I began playing again on a dislocated jaw. I played on it for seven years before it began to make itself felt..... .I first switched to piano, and should have known from the start that the piano was not user-friendly. The band director at Attucks went to a pawn shop and got me a cello. I've been a cellist ever since, but one of dubious distinction.

Was it a scary time, making that transition?

Yes -- very, very frightening, because of the not knowing.

Is jazz idiomatic to cello?

No, no, 100 times no! But you can't let that be the deterrent, because there was a time when they thought bebop wasn't idiomatic to the trombone until J.J. Johnson came along. Two things occurred to me. First, (as a jazz cellist) there was no competition, and second, there were no jobs, so I kind of had to carve a niche for myself.

Did you ever live in New York?

Yes, off and on two or three times. The first time, I lived in Harlem on 126th Street, right in back of the Apollo Theater. The next time I lived on West End, and the last time, out in Brooklyn. I also tried L.A.

Which of your compositions get played most?

"Jazz Suite for Clarinet and Symphony Orchestra: Three Ethnic Dances" (an Akron Symphony Orchestra commission from 1992) gets played two, three, four times a year. "Concertino for Cellular Phones and Symphony Orchestra," simply because Reuters picked it up after the (2006) Chicago premiere. Within two days, I'm told it had 72,000 hits on Google. My vocal pieces have gotten a lot of play. Mari Evans (the Indianapolis poet) has been one of my favorite collaborators. We did a piece called !"Imagery, Shadows and Dreams: Five Vignettes."

You are clearly a person of faith. How has that manifested itself in your music?

I am a man of very deep faith. Sometimes I don't think I deserve my life. I believe in Jesus Christ and that there is a day of reckoning. I have tried to live that way through the years ... I've written a number of pieces that have to do with faith, like "Black America: To the Memory of Dr. Martin Luther King." I also wrote a "Jazz Mass" (commissioned by Christ Church Episcopal Cathedral).

What are you writing now?

A piece about the Underground Railroad for orchestra and narrator that will premiere the 27th of April with the Bloomington Symphony.

Have you thought about when you'll retire from IU?

It isn't something I'm obsessed with. As long as my health is good, and as long as I enjoy it and can be effective ... I'm still fairly active, for a pterodactyl.