Todd Green was surrounded by instruments on the Paramount Theatre’s stage Tuesday night. The one-man band mesmerized the audience as he played a soft melody on a 13-string classical guitar. As he set the guitar down, the melody he just played echoed throughout the auditorium. Green had instantly recorded and replayed the melody.

Switching instruments every few minutes or so, Green laid one layer of music onto another, combining tracks, adding beats, sounds, pitches until the combination formed a wondrous sound. In less than 10 minutes, Green had created a symphony.

Green is a multi-instrumentalist and a master at musical improvisation with instruments from various cultures and backgrounds. In his mid-’50s, Green has toured around the country by himself since the mid-’90s, demonstrating his knowledge of more than 50 instruments in college lectures, high school classes, elementary school assemblies and performance halls across the U.S.

“I love improvisation,” Green said. “I’d hear an instrument, and a lot of people would say, ‘oh that’s a wonderful sounding instrument.’ I’d say that too, and I’d say, ‘I want to learn it.’”

“When I got interested in other cultures, I realized their main thing is improvising.”

As a teenager, he became interested in the blues and jazz. Luckily, he lived near New York, where there are tons of musicians and a nearby music teacher, who taught him the jazz guitar. He earned a scholarship to the Berklee School of Music in Boston, where he made plenty of connections and honed his craft in jazz guitar. He soon grew tired of the music scene in Boston, however, as he’d hoped to make a living where he grew up.

Green made a living in the recording studio for a while, playing sessions and recording tracks for other artists. He even played on some of the earliest hip hop and rap records to come out of New York, although it’s something he isn’t too proud of today. He didn’t like having to be a hired gun, so to speak, playing arrangements for other musicians.

While trying to play his own original pieces, he took to Middle Eastern and Asian music, specifically Indian instruments.

“When I got interested in other cultures, I realized their main thing is improvising,” Green said.

He was immediately drawn in, although it was instruments like bansori flutes and tablas drums that captured his interest as opposed to stringed instruments.

Eventually, Green was fed up playing in other bands, playing other people’s songs, doing music he didn’t believe in. He moved away from New York to Montana, preferring the real mountains of the Rockies to man-made skyscrapers in New York. As he toured around, he grew better and better performing with instruments from all over, whether it be the Japanese shakuhachi flute, the Irish Bodhran drum, or the Waylacho, a Bolivian stringed instrument which looks like a mini-ukelele.

No two Todd Green performances are the same. Green usually makes up the melodies he plays on-stage based on the mood he’s in, using a digital looper and the occasional vocal track to create a unique cultural collaboration of sound.

“All of it is created right in front of the audience,” Green said. “I really like that. I really respect that.”

In addition, Green’s given school presentations and residencies for more than a decade, something he never originally thought he’d be doing. In order to get a gig in Billings, Mont., he was told he’d have to do a school presentation.

“They would not book me unless I did some kind of educational program,” Green said. “But I had so much fun, right from the very first one. I felt really good, very comfortable with it. Now, I’ve been doing them ever since.”

It’s taken a long time for Green to get where he is, making his own music and collaborating with Middle Eastern and Persian artists in the Bay area in California, just a short skip from his home on Lake Tahoe in Nevada. That’s what Green, who came to Austin this as part of the New Harmonies exhibit thanks to the Legacy funding Austin Public Library secured, is going off to do next: Finishing up a few collaborations with artists he’s met and learned from. He’s made a living doing the kind of music he wants to do, and for those who want to pursue their own passions, he encourages people to chase after their dreams.

“I spent years and years of not being happy having to play other people’s music, having to play stuff I hated,” said Green. “I didn’t like it, so I just said, ‘The heck with it. Either I’m going to do it the way I want to do it or I’m going to do something else.’”