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Trumpeter Clark Terry and pianist Monty Alexander share one complaint about the task of performing with each other.

"I just don't do it often enough," Alexander says.

"And I feel the same about him," says Terry when he hears of the pianist's comment in a separate interview.

They will be getting the chance to correct that situation this weekend at concerts on the North Side when Terry will appear with Alexander's trio.

Both say they work well together and always look forward to their joint engagements. Alexander says they play together at least once a year and the relationship goes back to 1977. At that time, he says, they played in Montreaux, Switzerland, in a group that also featured Pittsburgh native bassist Ray Brown.

"I may have some influence of my homeland in my playing," says the pianist who was born in Kingston, Jamaica, "but I don't want to stop swinging or playing straight-ahead."

"Monty is very thorough," Terry says. "He knows the repertoire very well."

Alexander brings up the music of Duke Ellington and says "it is a reference poinr" for the both of them. He likes the bandleader-composer greatly and points out how Terry was a key member of the band from 1951 to '59.

Terry thinks about the Ellington reference and then agrees. "Yes," he says, "Monty shows that Duke influence. Even some of his chord progressions are like Duke's."

The two are at different stages of their careers, although both are still active. Alexander, 60, is performing frequently and putting out at least one album a year. Sometimes more.

"I don't think I'm over-recording," he says. "I'm just trying to present my music."

He will be working this gig with his usual trio members of bassist Hasaan Shakur and drummer Leon Joyce, who also will be featured on a live album due in February.

Terry, 83, meanwhile, admits he "may be too active for my age," but just doesn't want to quit.

He has been fighting diabetes, which also has affected his vision, had surgery for colon cancer that has been in remission three years, and sometimes even has trouble feeling the caps of the pistons on his horn.

Doesn't it make Terry want to hang it up?

"Not so far," he says, "Traveling is a real pain because I can't see well, but once I get out there playing the music, I think, what the hell, this isn't so bad."

That attitude has kept him recording, too, even when that involves a challenging task. His current album is "Porgy & Bess," a redoing of the famous look at George Gershwin's music originally done by arranger Gil Evans and trumpeter Miles Davis,

"At first, I thought it was a real challenge to do a work that nobody has touched for 45 years," he says about redoing a work that is a jazz classic. "But then I thought, 'Heck, Miles was a student of mine once, so let's give it a whirl.'"

The energetic, enthusiastic result pleases Terry and doesn't surprise Alexander at all.

"Clark Terry is what jazz is all about," the pianist says. "Nobody has ever played like him in the history of the music."

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