Jazz educator Paul Contos is joined by multi-talented multi-instrumentalists for Carl Cherry Center performance.

Blurring the lines between the different genres of music has been in vogue for a couple of decades or more. A more recent development has musicians playing a handful of instruments.

Maybe the trend is not all that new. Guitar players have long taken up mandolin, banjo or dobro. Yet it’s now commonplace for wind players to play many wind instruments, brass musicians to play several brass instruments or an oboist to play another double-reeded instrument, like English horn.

But every once in a while, a player comes along who can cross over between several classes of different instruments. When Monterey Jazz Festival Education Director Paul Contos takes to the Carl Cherry Theater stage this weekend for a show billed as Paul Contos and Friends, one of the friends will be Kyle Athayde, who is just such a multi-instrumentalist.

“It’s not a word I use often nor lightly,” Contos says, “but in Kyle’s case, the word ‘prodigy’ definitely applies.”

The product of a highly musical Orinda, California family, Athayde came up as a member of the MJF Next Generation Jazz Orchestra in 2004, 2005, and 2006. He went on to graduate from the Juilliard School of Music’s jazz program and is now a New York-based jazz composer, arranger, performer, teacher, soloist and bandleader.

And there’s more. He plays a breathtaking array of instruments: vibraphone, piano, trumpet, drums, bongos, congas, timbales, string bass, bass clarinet, sousaphone and vocal percussion.

Having worked with and been friends with Athayde’s father, Bob, for decades, Contos himself is a nationally prominent educator, having received Down Beat Magazine’s Jazz Education Achievement Award in 2017. He is amazed, but not surprised, by Kyle’s achievements.

“Bob has a true gift as an educator,” Contos says. “If a student expresses a willingness to learn and a passion for the craft, Bob doesn’t teach, he mentors. It isn’t an accident that his son is such a monster musician. He had one of the greatest instructors ever.”

Contos’ resume clocks appearances with legends like Dizzy Gillespie, Wynton and Branford Marsalis. But he is truly excited about this weekend’s gig.

“It’s not often that the piano and vibes are together. Usually it is one or the other leading a trio,” he says. “Together they provide a really rich, lush chord and rhythm structure for me to lay my sax and flute melodies on. I can’t wait.”

PAUL CONTOS AND FRIENDS 3pm Saturday, June 16. Carl Cherry Center Theater, Fourth and Guadalupe, Carmel. $25. 624-7491, brownpapertickets.com