Abstract? Art?

"We want to wish Jimi a happy birthday," Chris Wood told the audience at the Orpheum Friday night before he and bandmates Billy Martin and John Medeski launched into a blazing version of Hendrix's "Crosstown Traffic." Belting out Jimi's funky lines on bass, drums, and organ, respectively, Medeski, Martin and Wood finished off a night that had been a whirlwind tour of jazz, funk, rock and pure abstract experimentalism.

Medeski, Martin and Wood's music is not simply a new, avant garde construction of jazz. In a jazz world saturated with top notch players and willing experimentalists, MMW have managed to put themselves on the map by making music that is really more a dialogue between opposite elements like traditional jazz structure and wild experimentation. Though some criticize the band for often approaching the limits of meaning in their abstract wanderings, it is the incredible, seamless continuity between disparate elements that gives their music its real significance. Their real skill lies not simply in their abilty in weaving dense sonic tapestries or deftly reinterpreting Hendrix classics, but in the way that "Manic Depression" can suddenly but not joltingly come boiling out of a wash of throbbing bass, fuzzed out organ and clanging, uneasy percussion.

The band's story, too, has been a tale of opposites working together. The group formed in New York back in 1991, the members hailing from California, Kentucky and the city itself. Since then they have recorded albums not only in the usual New York studios, but also in a solar powered shack in Hawaii while living in a tree house. Over the years they have frequently worked with other jazz innovators like John Scofield and Charlie Hunter, but have also been known to lay down sets with turntablist DJ Logic.

On stage at the Orpheum, the musical mix tended to flip between head-bobbing, butt-shaking funk and loose soundscape jamming. The crowd, a mix of dreadlocked Berkelee students and buttoned-down middle-aged jazz fans, divided along the expected lines on whether to get up and shake it or keep to their seats and just enjoy the atmosphere during the first set. Once the second set dropped, though, it was clear that anyone not willing to get up off of that thing was going to be stuck looking at someone else's, and most everyone took to their feet. MMW kept them moving, for the most part, putting together a solid night of original jams along with a heavy helping of Hendrix brought on by their performance at a tribute festival a few days before in Seattle. Though the music had its less danceable moments, leaving people simply weaving in the texture of the music, this ebb and flow is an essential element of one of jazz's most dynamic acts.

MEDESKI, MARTIN AND WOOD

at

The Orpheum

Nov. 30

at

The Orpheum

Nov. 30