Don Byron.

Today’s working jazz musician must juggle many projects in order to build a career. For most players, gigs alone don’t pay the bills, so they must teach, play recording sessions and perform with multiple bands. Few musicians wear as many hats as woodwind artist Don Byron. Often characterized as an avant-garde artist, Byron’s work stretches far beyond that label.

“To me Joe Henderson is someone to emulate,” said Byron, referring to the late, great saxophonist. “He played a lot of noise, but he also played a lot of blues. He played a lot of straight ahead stuff, but he also put in a lot of substitutions.”

If this kind of eclecticism is something Byron has always sought, then he has most certainly succeeded. His first album, 1992’s Tuskeegee Experiments, was a mix of avant-classical music and jazz improvisation. A few years later, he embraced hip-hop and funk on Nu Blaxploitation. Byron also has a long history with Klezmer, going back to his student days at The New England Conservatory. The thread that ties all of this together is the contemporary lens through which Byron sees these styles, which in turn shifts them just off center. The result is a hybrid style that draws from a deep well of influences, but which maintains Byron’s individuality.

Byron is also an accomplished composer, having written for film and worked with new music ensemble Bang on a Can. In 2009, his Seven Etudes for Solo Piano was a Pulitzer Prize finalist.

“I studied with a guy named George Russell, and I studied a lot of Stravinsky’s music,” Byron said. “As composers go, I consider myself one of Stravinsky’s children.”

On Sunday, Byron will lead a quartet at Bohemian Caverns as part of Transparent Productions‘ Sundays @ 7 series at the historic venue. playing a mix of original compositions and works by others. The music will be more on the jazz end of the spectrum, and features bassist Cameron Brown, trumpeter Ralph Alessi and drummer Tony Jefferson. Byron will be playing both saxophone and clarinet, but one important component to his unique sound is that instead of playing the standard B-flat clarinet, Byron performs on an E-flat horn.

“People will get a sense of how I think compositionally and how I think about a lot of other things,” Byron said of Sunday’s sets. “I’m a good saxophone player, but I’m a very good clarinet player.”

The Don Byron Quartet will perform 7 and 9 p.m. sets on Sunday at Bohemian Caverns. $15 in advance/$20 at the door.