Odds are you’re not one of the lucky 60 or 70 people who were on hand at The Stone Church last Wednesday for a performance from Boston’s Club D’Elf featuring Newmarket’s David Tronzo on guitar. You screwed up. From the time D’Elf’s tall bassist/band leader Mike Rivard brought the players on stage around 10:30 p.m. until they finished around half past midnight, a rapt audience witnessed what has to be one of the most magical musical events of the year in the sticks of New Hampshire—and on a “school night” to boot.

Rivard’s Club D’Elf is a Boston institution with a shockingly impressive cast of 70+ musicians, who rotate in to contribute to the project’s half improv/ half arranged format of mostly instrumental music. This night’s lineup featured Moroccan singer/percussionist/oudist Brahim Fribgane, guitarists Tronzo and N.H. North country resident Randy Roos, along with Eric Kerr behind the kit.

Rivard—armed with a worn Fender Jazz bass and more pedals than the Tour de France— and the brilliant Kerr played stone mason to the rest, laying a sturdy foundation of diverse, exotic and hypnotic rhythms. Aside from the very occasional obvious visual cue from Rivard, the players were content to let their instruments do the communicating, resulting in some truly inspiring and impressive interplay. Each song usually started with Rivard and Kerr starting a theme, with each guitarist laying back letting the song develop before taking a hand in molding the music themselves. Fribgane joined in on rhythmic duties on Cajon (a wooden box with South American roots, sat upon and played as a hand drum) and some mysterious tiny “hand cymbals,” whose lovely chiming had a mesmerizing effect. When Fribgane played his oud, a fretless Moroccan instrument akin to a lute, the combination of the instrument’s rich texture and Fribgane’s soulful, grainy vocals made for some of the evening’s finest moments. Roos and Tronzo are guitar monsters, and they threw down.  Two more of the shows golden moments included an original piece of Roos’ which had never been played before—the players looking down at the stage, sight reading sheet music before taking the new song in unexpected, unplanned directions—and Tronzo’s “Jar of Hair,” a trance inducing number anchored by Fribgane’s aforementioned cymbals, Kerr’s African rhythms, Roos’s handy Gibson SG work, Tronzo’s unique processed slide guitar mastery. It was something to behold.