Long before he was one of the world’s top jazz stars, Joshua Redman was a student at Harvard University with his eye set on attending Yale Law School.

Sitting in those Ivy League classrooms, Redman never dreamed that the script might someday flip — that he’d be the one at the podium at one of the world’s most prestigious universities.

“Definitely not,” the Berkeley native says with a laugh. “I was just trying to get through it. I was just trying not to fail my classes.”

Redman actually graduated summa cum laude from Harvard in 1991. And now he has has joined the academic world and is teaching at Stanford University.

The saxophonist-composer-bandleader is a “visiting artist” with the Department of Music in the School of the Humanities and Sciences for the current school year. He’s teaching masterclasses and courses in music improvisation, as well as guest lecturing and coaching the school’s jazz combos and performing with the Stanford Jazz Orchestra.

It’s a cool turn of events, but definitely one that the Bay Area jazz star — who still calls Berkeley home — didn’t see coming.

“I’ve never considered myself a teacher and an educator,” says Redman, who is the son of jazz saxophonist Dewey Redman and dancer Renee Shedroff. “I didn’t come through the music education system. I never really studied music formally at all. So, I feel uniquely unqualified to be a teacher.”

Redman, arely one to toot his own horn, does possess one big qualification — he’s one of the more important jazz musicians of his generation, having garnered seven Grammy nominations released some 20 albums as a band leader and emerged as one of the genre’s top touring acts. No wonder Stanford, which first brought Joshua on as visiting artist at the start of 2019, was glad to get him.

“It’s virtually unheard of to have one of the greatest jazz artists of our times in a significant residence at any university once, let alone twice,” says James Nadel, founder of the Stanford Jazz Workshop.

The scholarly pursuits, however, won’t keep Redman from his busy touring and recording schedule. In fact, he has a four-night stand at SFJazz Center Nov. 14-17 with his great quartet — featuring pianist Aaron Goldberg, bassist Reuben Rogers and drummer Gregory Hutchinson. Tickets are $35-$95, www.sfjazz.org.

“Joshua is SFJazz family and it is always great to have him with any of his ambitious projects and working groups,” says Randall Kline, executive artistic director for SFJazz. “He was a founding member of the SFJazz Collective and first of his many SFJazz performances was in 1984 when he performed with the Berkeley High School Jazz Band.”

The Joshua Redman Quartet is supporting this year’s critically acclaimed “Come What May,” which is the first offering from this particular group of musicians in almost two decades.

“They are consummate musicians,” Redman remarks on why he enjoys collaborating with Goldberg, Rogers and Hutchinson. “They are virtuosos on their instruments. They are completely fluent in the jazz language as it’s spoken today. They are really flexible, stylistically.

“I think more than anything, everybody just comes to play every night. There is just a real enthusiasm for making music – and for making music together.”

After the SFJazz dates, as well as concerts at the Raven Theater in Healdsburg on Nov. 22 and the Bach Dancing & Dynamite Society in Half Moon Bay on Nov. 24, Redman heads to Mozambique at the end of the month and then to Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands at the start of the new year.

It’s a busy life, but Redman says he’s doing what he loves to do.

“I love to play music with great musicians for people around the world,” he says. “That’s a blessing. That’s a luxury. That’s a passion of mine. I’m so fortunate that I’ve been able to continue to do that for more than half my life.”

And yet it could have been so different. After all, his original plans were to attend Yale Law School after graduating from Harvard. But then he decided to defer admission so he could go play jazz in New York for a year.

“But it’s been the longest year of my life — a year that has lasted about 28 years now,” Redman laughs.

After establishing himself as one of the top players in the game in New York, Redman moved back to his hometown of Berkeley in 2002. But he initially thought it would only be temporary.

“I didn’t originally move back here so much because I wanted to move back,” he says. “I moved back because I was going through a divorce and I couldn’t afford to stay in New York. So, I kind of moved back to the Bay Area a bit under duress. You know, I was living with my mom for three years. I thought I was going to go back to New York. I mean, I loved New York. I still do love New York.

“But when the time came when I thought I was going to move to back to New York, I realized that there was something about being back home in Berkeley and the Bay Area that just felt right to me.”