John Egizi is chasing down a musical dream at a tender age.

He pursues it in the corner of his mind where the long notes and improvisational urges dwell, and via the train tracks that roust him off his pillow in Ventura long before a rooster even thinks about crowing.

Every school day, the 15-year-old phenom packs up his trombone and catches the 5:26 a.m. Metrolink train in Montalvo for the 62-mile trip to Union Station in downtown Los Angeles. Upon the 7:07 a.m. arrival, he hops a bus for the short ride to the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts. In all, it's two hours one way; he retraces the same tracks in the evening, running across campus to catch the train back home, only to resume the routine again the next morning. The alarm beckons at 4:45 a.m. He's in the second year of a four-year program that can be reduced to one word — jazz.

Egizi didn't choose to go to the arts school; it recruited him. Some — make that quite a few, from

teachers to those who've sat in with him on gigs — think the kid can really play. The talk, on a national scale, stops just short of prodigy and rests on potential, at once the most smoldering and tantalizing word along life's trail.

During a recent Friday night practice session in his Ventura living room, a rare window in his schedule, Egizi talked of going to the University of Southern California to study jazz composition, or even to the Juilliard School in New York, and then forming his own jazz combo.

"I want to be made into a really good musician who can play," said Egizi, decked out in a black T-shirt with the playful query, "got musicians?" in lowercase white letters. "I want to be one of the best."

He's already marked quite a few notches in his jazz slide trombone. As part of a school group, he played at the Monterey Jazz Festival this fall; he also won a summer scholarship to the Berklee College of Music in Boston. He jams from time to time at the Catalina Bar & Grill, an L.A. jazz hot spot on Sunset Boulevard, and sits in with his dad with the Moorpark College jazz ensemble, tooting the occasional solo. His father, also named John, is a gifted musician as well, and plays saxophone and guitar.

The kid is hot tonight

If all this sounds like a whirlwind, Egizi appears to be the calm in the center of the vortex.

He played with all the nonchalance and whimsy that jazz fosters, peppered with the thoughtful seriousness of someone who means business.

He whipped through Wayne Shorter's "Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum" and the Miles Davis-John Coltrane-Bill Evans version of "On Green Dolphin Street." Eyes closed, his scraggly black locks forming a curtain over his eyes and falling almost to his nose, he became ensconced in song, his mind riding some wave of the vast imagination's flow.

"I just sort of let it go," he said, trying to pinpoint his style. "I'm taking it to a new setting with the song. What's in my head, I think, is turning out well."

He stopped himself, then smiled before adding, "Sometimes, I'm just trying to play the fastest thing."

Egizi's teacher, Ira Nepus of Thousand Oaks, called him "a very gifted young man with a bright future."

"He has such a great mind and he's so committed to the music, particularly jazz and jazz improvisation," said Nepus, an accomplished trombonist who has performed or recorded with Woody Herman, Quincy Jones, Diana Krall and others.

"I really think he'll be one of the forerunners on the instrument, and by that I mean in the nation."

Bob Aguilar, director of the feature group in the Moorpark College jazz ensemble and an adjunct professor of music there, pointed out that all this has mushroomed in a few years.

"He's just turned out to be a natural," Aguilar said. "He just kind of took off. We're really excited to have him. He'll be a name someday, I'm sure of it. He's a I don't want to say prodigy, but he's such a wonderful talent."

All this because of the horn frequently at his side, an instrument Egizi initially picked up at Anacapa Middle School because he "thought it looked cool." Aguilar had him at a summer jazz workshop at Moorpark College in 2005.

Word spread and eventually reached Jason Goldman at the Los Angeles arts school, who called up dad John one day and asked if his son would audition for them. Dad wondered how he'd get to school; "Metrolink," came the reply. His son wasn't crazy about it.

"At first, I thought it was a joke — I'm not going to be able to make it to L.A. every day,'" Egizi recalled. "I thought taking a train was ridiculous. But then I found out how cool the school is, and it's all worth it."

The school, he said, is rife with great teachers, "so it's an honor to be there."

Goldman, he noted, has toured with Shorter and Herbie Hancock. Also on faculty is budding legend Walter Smith III, of whom Egizi said, "I'm just blown away that I get to play with one of my favorite saxophone players."

"Our teachers are in the jazz scene; they don't just know about it, they're in it," Egizi continued.

Old and new tracks

Egizi's school day is a clear dichotomy: academics — English, math, physics, world history, etc. — in the morning, and music all afternoon. Currently, he's studying big band, jazz theory and jazz combo.

The evening part of his schedule is a bit more open; if his half-mile sprint across campus at the 4 p.m. bell fails to land him on the 4:26 p.m. train at Union Station, he catches the 5:10. That puts him back in Ventura at 6 or 7 p.m.

Said his dad: "It works, but just barely. It's a lot of work on John's part. I've got to hand it to him; he's very diligent."

Many a time, Dad said, he's told his son to go to bed only to hear back that he has to finish practicing. "Sometimes he's up until 11 p.m. playing those long notes." That's late, given that 4:45 a.m. wake-up call. Egizi insists this schedule isn't insane.

"It's not that bad," he said with a touch of deadpan. "I've learned how to fall asleep sitting upright on the train; I used to not be able to do that."

Egizi listens to such influences as Davis, Coltrane, Charlie Parker, Michael Brecker and Joshua Redman.

Some of those jazz giants had bouts with heroin and other ills and even succumbed to them. Said Egizi's dad, "We've already talked about drugs getting in the way." He said he's boiled down that message thusly: Do that and pretty soon you're stuck doing menial jobs.

Egizi enjoys reading Greek and Roman history and playing computer video games, which drew an eye roll and laugh from Dad across the living room. Still five months from turning 16, Egizi said he hasn't even thought about getting a learner's permit to drive.

Earlier this month, Egizi played for KCET's annual Spotlight Awards; he'll find out in January if he's made the semifinals. More jazz festivals are in the offing next spring.

"My real goal," Egizi said near practice's end, after a long note fell from his lips, "is to exceed the limits of the trombone, to go beyond in some way."

He paused, then added, "But I'm still figuring it out."

An impish grin spread beneath those long black locks.

"As long as I can play a couple of burnin' lines," he said, "I'm good with that right now."