ELLENSBURG -- When saxophone virtuoso Lenny Price and his band take the stage tonight to help kick off Ellensburg's Jazz in the Valley, he has more to celebrate than his fourth appearance at this premier music event.

Price, who has backed everyone from The Four Tops to Ray Parker Jr. and has played 140 venues with guitarist Earl Klugh, is wrapping up the classes he needs for a bachelor's degree in music at Central Washington University.

That's right. A bachelor's degree. In music.

While the 48-year-old Price has logged close to four decades playing instruments, his undergraduate degree was in physical science from the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis.

So when he wanted to turn his musical career toward the classroom, he couldn't dodge the fact that he'd never had college-level training in music theory or history.

"He would have had to have passed our diagnostic tests in music theory and music history ... and there's no way he could have done that," says Peter Gries, chairman of Central's music department. "His knowledge and skills are so specific to the areas where he's just wonderful, but they don't really branch past that."

It's been six years since Price relocated to Ellensburg from Detroit. By now he figured he'd be married, have a master's degree and might even be working toward a Ph.D.

Instead, he's single, bunking with a friend, and has decided to quit touring with Klugh.

"This is the right place at the right time for me," Price says. "I've just gotta continue to work, to make it congeal into a clear purpose."

Price got his first taste of the Northwest during his first concert with Klugh at the Mt. Hood Jazz Festival in 1997. It was sweet: A crowd of 18,000, snow-capped Mount Hood in one direction, the craggy drama of the Columbia Gorge in the other. And they performed before one of his favorite groups, The Rippingtons.

Five years later, when they played Chateau Ste. Michelle in Woodinville, Wash., a gorgeous woman in the front row caught Price's eye. Soon after, she had his heart, too.

"I was ready to leave Detroit," he says. "She gave me a destination."

Teaching also had become increasingly appealing. In Michigan, he'd spent a year starting a middle school band program, and another teaching jazz at a community college.

An old college friend pointed Price to Central Washington University. In spring 2004, he met with Chris Bruya, Central's head of jazz studies, and Gries. After a tour of the almost-open Music Building, Price was sold. He went home and crafted an admissions essay he titled "Bridging the Gap."

He envisioned a book series on post-1960s contemporary jazz artists -- Klugh, Pat Metheny, Spyro Gyra -- whom he believes have gotten short shrift by academia, as a potential thesis.

"If the project is taken to its logical conclusion," he wrote in his essay, "I can envision Ellensburg itself being transformed into a jazz mecca as the subjects of the books draw people to fill your new concert hall, sleep in beds at hotels, eat meals at restaurants, etc."

It was a vision that excited Bruya, Gries and the new dean of arts and humanities, Marji Morgan. For his second and third years, Morgan and Gries worked out a special assistantship. In exchange for tuition, Price coached individual jazz students and combos and taught jazz improv.

At first, a cadre of advanced students hooked into Price's freewheeling teaching style. He filled his students' ears with his vast jazz catalog, then pushed them to develop their ear for improv.

Jazz is so conversational, Price believes, that the teaching has to be aural.

"Imitate, then interpret," is the core of his teaching philosophy.

"How did you learn to speak?" he asks his students. "You heard people talking before you went to school. Nobody sat you down and had you read a book about how to speak. You listened, you put it together in your mind, and you refined it after the fact.

"Why should your music be any different?"

Some students soaked it up and soared. Three joined Price to form the Galileo Quartet. And in 2005, they recorded "Live at the Starlight" at the popular Ellensburg bar and restaurant.

But the next year, some students who were newer to music, led by a teacher's assistant, rebelled. They wanted a step-by-step, book-based teaching style. They let Gries and Bruya know of their discontent and Price, a former Navy midshipman, was stunned by what he perceived as their disrespect.

"I just couldn't tolerate having to explain myself to a student -- not after 30-plus years of playing and I'm still touring with a Grammy winner," he recalls, the irritation still close to the surface.

Price stepped back from teaching students who preferred the more structured style and turned to another aspect of education he loved: proselytizing. He made the rounds at area schools, encouraging students to pick up an instrument.

At Central, he took lessons in the sax but concentrated on classical. He sang in the university chorale, performing classical, a cappella music. In fall 2005, Price even played in the marching band. He has a 12-picture Facebook album documenting the band's "final" at the Battle of Seattle football showdown with Western Washington University in Husky Stadium.

The year 2006 brought a high and a low. Price received the Ellensburg Arts Commission's "community arts treasure" award. But he and his girlfriend in Seattle were talking less and less. Then one day she called and Price guessed: "You're engaged, aren't you?" She was.

The year 2007 was a struggle. Price developed a viral infection near the end of spring quarter and had to take incompletes in his classes.

He figured he'd finish them, though, so he donned Central's maroon graduation robes and marched across the stage at Tomlinson Stadium to collect a diploma.

But the next year, he hit bottom. Out of money, his electricity and gas were shut off and he was deeply depressed. The incompletes converted to F's.

"I was burned out," Price says. "I lost my focus."

When Jan. 1, 2010, dawned, Price determined to clear his head and forge a new plan.

Age 50 was feeling closer. He wanted to get back to making his own music, wanted to see about finishing that degree, wanted to complete a CD he calls "Buzz" covering the Yellowjackets.

And he decided that a concert in Colorado Springs in April would be his last gig with Klugh.

In early June, a chance meeting at D&M Coffee with James Wickerath, an Ellensburg doctor, put the bachelor's degree back in the mix. They'd been friendly since Wickerath's three daughters came home from school, buzzing about this inspiring musician. So when Wickerath discovered the only thing keeping Price from finishing his degree was money, he had the University Foundation set up a scholarship and e-mailed friends with a plea to help Price.

While Wickerath hopes more help will come -- Price's past debts and current fees total $2,800 -- he's willing to put the difference on his Visa card.

The Ellensburg doctor says he's just paying it forward. He swept floors at a Cle Elum hardware store to pay his undergraduate loans and earn money for medical school. A dishwasher in a nearby cafe found out and cut him a check for $5,000, eventually giving him another $10,000.

"(Lenny) was trying the same route as I was and it didn't work for me," Wickerath says. "The only way I got out of that trap was somebody else giving me a hand up."

Another conversation two weeks ago may bring Price full circle. When Price swung by his office to say hello, Bob Lupton, chairman of the information technology and administrative management department -- and a drummer Price had worked with -- says he wondered yet again if Price couldn't earn an individual studies master's by fusing music, information technology and marketing.

This time, with his bachelor's in reach, Price could get his head around it. Lupton offered to chair his committee, then picked up the phone; that afternoon, Central's dean of graduate studies met with Price and liked what he heard.

"It feels like the universe is coming back together here," Price says. "Like a little synchronicity."

* Cynthia Mitchell, a former reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the Wall Street Journal, is an associate professor of journalism at Central Washington University.