Picture this: a nine-year-old boy attends an orchestra concert, his first ever. He’s so taken with the experience that he writes a long, heartfelt letter to the conductor about how he’d like to follow in his footsteps. That conductor, the San Francisco Symphony’s Michael Tilson Thomas (MTT to his fans), writes back to the boy and a career is born.

This might sound like a movie script, but it really happened and there is a happy ending. The kid was 17-year-old clarinet prodigy Teddy Abrams, who makes his Monterey Peninsula debut this Saturday night as he joins Russia’s St. Petersburg String Quartet for its Saturday night Chamber Music Monterey Bay concert at the Sunset Center in Carmel. The concert’s climax features Abrams’ clarinet work on Brahms’ Clarinet Quintet in B minor, Opus 115.

A student at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Abrams’ musical odyssey began at the tender age of five when he began taking piano lessons. He took up the clarinet at age eight to be part of his Oakland grammar school band and also took private lessons on the instrument. By age nine, Abrams opted to skip middle school and high school and attend junior college instead so he could have a more flexible schedule to perform. After five years at two different community colleges, Abrams began his studies at the conservatory, where he’ll graduate next year with a BA in piano.

Thanks to his relationship with MTT, Abrams has conducted the New World Symphony at Carnegie Hall, the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra (of which he is a member) and the Tassajara Symphony. He’s also soloed with the San Francisco and Oakland Symphonies among others and even played the national anthem at an Oakland A’s game. He sees his career as a performer, conductor and composer. But, the “prodigy” tag is not one he relishes.

“I always get suspicious when I hear that word,” Abrams says by telephone from his home in Oakland. “I don’t think in those terms myself. I just consider myself a musician, and the whole point of being a musician is to take works by composers and see what they’re trying to say, and what can I do to express that again? It doesn’t really make any difference how old you are as long as you can express yourself. Then it becomes more about everybody’s in it for the same reason.”

This serious-minded approach to music also helped Abrams land the Carmel gig. When the St. Petersburg String Quartet made it known that they wanted to perform the Brahms quintet and needed a local clarinetist, Abrams was the first choice.

The Brahms quintet begins with the sound of just two violins and then takes a turn for the melancholy with the addition of the clarinet. For Abrams, the clarinet is ideally suited to express these feelings. “I think one of the effects that it can play, which is often used very well by composers, is the sort of darkness of it—a very inward sound,” he says.

Saturday night’s program also includes the Central Coast premier of a haunting piece by the young Georgian composer Zurab Nadareishvili, as well as works by the legendary Shostakovich, who was born in St. Petersburg.

Known for their technically flawless performances, the St. Petersburg String Quartet is made up of first violinist Alla Aranovskaya, second violinist David Chernyavsky, violist Aleksey Koptev, and cellist Leonid Shukaev.

As a clarinetist, Abrams is especially honored to be performing the Brahms quintet, because the sound of the clarinet is what got the composer writing music again after taking a self-imposed hiatus.

“There’s just a great pride because the clarinet is the thing that made Brahms start composing some of his best music again,” Abrams says. “If it hadn’t been for our instrument, Brahms wouldn’t have written many of his most wonderful pieces.”

St. Petersburg String Quartet performs 8pm Sat. $27-$50. sunset Center, San Carlos and 9th, Carmel. 625-2212.