Unless you hear Dave Holland speak, you’re apt to forget that the bassist-composer-bandleader is British. Unlike, say, George Shearing, who was a star in his native land long before he immigrated to the home of jazz, Mr. Holland was only 21 when he was hired by Miles Davis and moved across the ocean. Forty years later, his English accent hasn’t disappeared, but he’s become an American jazz legend.

Still, Mr. Holland’s oeuvre remains rooted in the London jazz scene of the 1960s. The most popular brand of jazz at that time was a British adaptation of old-school Dixieland music known as “trad,” and that was what Mr. Holland played when he first arrived in London from his native Wolverhampton. But a segment of the British jazz audience kept up to date with the new music from America.

Mr. Holland fell in with experimental free jazz players like John Surnam and Evan Parker. It was nothing for him to play New Orleans music one night and the new thing the next. This was highly unusual at the time. In mid-’60s New York, the disciples of Eddie Condon and Ornette Coleman acted, for the most part, as if the other camp didn’t exist.

Mr. Holland, meanwhile, learned to play not only different jazz styles but also pop (he toured with Johnny Ray and Roy Orbison) and classical music – in effect, the kind of formal education that jazz students receive today. This versatility has served him well throughout his career: His current groups use so many different elements from both the bebop and free-jazz schools that distinguishing between the two is, in fact, an exercise for the classroom.

Mr. Holland, who is starring this week at Birdland with four different bands, spoke to me last week. He recalled being drawn to music by the pop of the 1950s, and starting with the ukulele and then the guitar; it was the music of Django Reinhardt, he said, that turned him on to jazz.

“After a while I switched to bass guitar, but then when I really made the commitment to be a professional musician, I said ‘Let me broaden my scope a little bit as a bass player.’ I got a copy of Downbeat magazine and saw that Ray Brown was at the top of the poll as a bass player, so I went to the record store and bought a couple of records by him, and I also bought a couple of records I found by Leroy Vinnegar. I took these four albums home, and that was my epiphany. I was suddenly aware of what could be done with the bass – the sophistication of the instrument, and the wonderful sound and the feeling that those marvelous musicians were able to get out of it.Within a few weeks, I got myself an acoustic bass and started practicing along with the records.”

Mr. Holland, who turns 60 in October, was a professional bassist by the time he was 16; at 17 he moved to London and began studying at the Guildhall School of Music. He supported himself by working all over the city. As a regular employee at London’s best-known jazz club, Ronnie Scott’s, he worked with visiting American stars such as Ben Webster and Coleman Hawkins, and local bands that were double-billed with international headliners.

It was on one such occasion that Davis came into the club to see his old friend Bill Evans. “We were there for two or three weeks playing opposite Bill’s trio,” Mr. Holland said.”Miles was in London on his own for personal reasons, he dropped by the club to see Bill and he heard me.He sent me a message through [his former drummer] Philly Joe Jones, who was living in London and he was a friend of mine,and he told me at the end of the night that Miles wanted me to join his band. I was completely surprised, as you can imagine. I had always wanted to come to America – now I was transported first class.”

Mr. Holland replaced Ron Carter in the seminal Miles Davis Quintet of the 1960s, which also featured Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, and Tony Williams. He remained on board after Davis converted to electronic music and recorded the two 1969 albums that defined the jazz-fusion movement, “In a Silent Way” and “Bitches Brew.”

Mr. Holland pointed out that in these years the group was playing music that mixed three generations of Miles’s music: his signature ballads from the 1950s, like “‘Round Midnight”; the music written by Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock in the mid-’60s; and the newer, electrically-driven pieces.

“There’s been a lot said about Miles commercializing his music,” Mr. Holland said.”Well, certainly he wanted to reached out to a bigger audience, but he didn’t compromise the creative aspect.The music was still creative, it was still original, it was still unmistakably Miles, and what’s wrong with broadening the audience for the music?”

Mr. Holland left the quintet in the summer of 1970 along with pianist Chick Corea (who had replaced Hancock with Davis’s group some time earlier). The two formed a band of their own,which they called Circle and which co-starred the multi-reed player Anthony Braxton and drummer Barry Altschul. This was some of the most challenging music Mr. Corea has ever been involved in; at the same time, it was some of the most accessible music ever made by Mr. Braxton. The quartet stayed together for less than two years, but made several important recordings.

Mr. Holland cut his first recording as a leader,the well-received “Conference of the Birds,” in 1972, but he spent most of the 1970s playing in groups led by the Downtown factotum Sam Rivers, the late singer Betty Carter, and Stan Getz, who, along with Miles Davis, was the closest thing jazz had at the time to a pop star. By the end of the decade, Mr. Holland had built enough of a reputation – and enough of a library of original music – to lead his own band. “You reach a certain stage in your life where you decide whether you’re going to take that step of responsibility and create a band,” he said. “I was looking to play some music that I didn’t see a place to do anywhere else.”

For the most part, Mr. Holland’s bands dispense with the piano and guitar, which means he has to work doubly hard as a bassist and as a leader. His first quintet featured three horns, in cluding his old friend Kenny Wheeler and the emerging Steve Coleman. Roughly a decade ago, he settled on a five-piece format of trombone (Kevin Eubanks, who also joins Mr. Holland in writing some of the band’s music), tenor saxophone (Chris Potter), vibraphone (Steve Nelson), drums (Billy Kilson), and his own bass.

Mr. Holland put together his 13-piece big band in time for the 2000 Montreal Jazz Festival, and its first album, “What Goes Around” (2002), won a Grammy Award. Supported by his manager and daughter Louise, Mr. Holland broke from ECM Records, his label since 1972, to start a record company of his own. Dare2 Records was launched a year ago with Mr. Holland’s second big-band album, “Overtime.”

The big band is perhaps an even better vehicle for Mr. Holland’s ambitions than the quintet. The compositions range from the far out to the funky; some of the blues features could have been written by Count Basie. Both the big band and the quintet will be featured in the Birdland series, as will two new projects – a sextet and a special duo with Mr. Nelson.

“I have always enjoyed playing a lot of different kinds of music,” he said, “and as long as it’s being played with sincerity and a good feeling, I’m down for it.”

The Dave Holland Big Band on January 18; the Dave Holland Quintet on January 19; Dave Holland New Sextet on January 20 & 21; the Dave Holland Duo with Steve Nelson on January 22 at Birdland (315 W. 44th Street, between Eighth and Ninth Avenues, 212-581-3080).