There are very few things a reporter likes hearing less than “This interview is going to be only five minutes — 10, tops.”
Unless it’s with someone like Woody Allen.

Fortunately, 10 minutes on the phone with Allen, who returns to the Kravis Center on Wednesday with his New Orleans Jazz Band, yields more highly quotable material than a half hour with the average celebrity.

And that’s mostly because Woody Allen, the interview subject, has something in common with Woody Allen, the persona made famous as an actor and director in Annie Hall, Hannah and Her Sisters, Manhattan, Crimes and Misdemeanors and others. He’s delightfully wordy, not only answering the question asked, but tossing in a few thoughtful insights and, typically, some self-deprecating aside to downplay how big a deal he is.

“I have no illusions about my playing,” Allen says, when asked about his band, with whom he plays clarinet each week at New York’s Carlyle Hotel, and with whom he’s traveled the world. (The documentary Wild Man Blues follows one of their European tours.)

“The guys in the band are sensational, and could play anywhere without impunity. They carry me along. I get by on the fact that I’m a celebrity from the movies,” he says. “That cuts me a lot of slack. I’m enthusiastic over (music) and dedicated to it, but I have no real gift for it.”

Whether or not he’s a great musician is up to the critics. Allen says he does it because of his well-documented love of the art form — his 1999 movie Sweet And Lowdown tells the story of a fictional jazz guitarist and his movie soundtracks are a cornucopia of jazz styles, from Dixieland to big band.

“It’s a purely pleasurable experience. I grew up wanting to play New Orleans jazz just because there’s a very special thing about it, that I’m attracted to, and that a small amount of people are attracted to,” he says. “I understand that it has a minuscule audience, and that some people would have no interest in it, like I would have no interest in listening to an evening of Gregorian chants.”

Growing up in Brooklyn, Allen says he never heard New Orleans jazz, with the radio in the area dedicated to “good pop music” like the Gershwins and Cole Porter, played by Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman and the like. But at 15, he was introduced to the sounds of the Big Easy for the first time, and was forever hooked.

“It was so primitive, so emotional and simple,” he remembers, “so expressive of the person playing it. It might be some ancient, illiterate African-American who had spent the day working on the docks, who didn’t read music, but had so much feeling that he could play a note here and a note there, and it was so beautiful. Of course, some of it was much more sophisticated, like Louis Armstrong, that crossed over. But all of it was just so emotional and direct, not complicated like modern jazz. It’s very beautiful if you give it a chance.”

As enthusiastic as Allen is about the music, he says he never believed that his association with New Orleans jazz would start some giant revolution — “I don’t think I could convert everybody” — and “had no real compulsion to play in front of other people. I had my fill of that as a nightclub comedian. I was very happy to stay in my living room.”
However, his band members weren’t content to hang out playing in the living room, which led to the Carlyle gig, and to playing in some of the most beautiful concert halls in the world. When that’s your goal, it’s handy, as Allen said, to have a movie star on clarinet.

And even if that movie star never intended to tour, he might find, as Allen has, that he’s enjoying himself.

“It’s like Paul Newman with his racing cars,” he says. “It’s what I like to do. I play, and I’m surrounded by fabulous players. We do take it seriously — we don’t pander, don’t do a lot of nonsense or drum solos. We play the music of Jelly Roll Morton and Louis Armstrong, authentically, as it was played in New Orleans. It has a very small listening public, really.”
Nonetheless, Allen says, he’s happy to have the audiences, even if “they come because of the movies and they want to see if I’m as short in person.”

And don’t mistake his musical foray as some grand exploration of creative expression, Allen adds. He just likes playing the music he loves — “It’s relaxing,” he says. “If the audience vanished, I’d be happy to play on stage and sit there for a couple of hours. I’m like the guy that plays in a poker game once a week.”

Of course, few people are going to tune in to some guy’s weekly poker game. Then again, if it’s Woody Allen, they just might.
“I’m surprised how many people, when they do hear the music presented in the right way, become interested in it,” he says. “If I had 100 people in a room who had never heard it, and could play them a great recording, I could open them up to what is beautiful about it. Not all of them. But I do think there would be a number of people who would open up to it. It is kind of gorgeous, in a way.”

WOODY ALLEN

AND HIS NEW ORLEANS BAND

8 p.m. Wednesday

Kravis Center, West Palm Beach Information: (561) 832-7469 or www.kravis.org