About five years ago, while I was living in Boulder, Colo., a drummer friend of mine called to inform me that a good jazz band was playing up in Nederland. A group of us packed into two cars and hopped on 119, which carves a winding path through the Rockies to "Ned," a small town famed for its mountain biking. Our destination was a rough, hillbilly bar called the Pioneer Inn. The jazz band appearing there was called Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey.

The sounds that filled the Inn that night were as strange as the band's name and beautiful, too. When the band broke into Coltrane's "India," it was like a levee breaking in my head. I remember gripping my beer bottle so tightly that it might have shattered in my hand. Classically trained keyboardist Brian Haas remained a subject of conversation for days, his vermiform undulations swelling to a nimbus of notes. My friend sat in on drums, the audience sweated and howled, and libations were poured to the jazz gods of old.

The Jacob Fred crew was bound to win over a jazz junkie like myself. But when the trio comes to The Stone Church on Friday, June 24, they should attract spectators of sundry musical backgrounds. The trio's most recent record, Walking With Giants (2004, Hyena Records), is an acoustic monsoon of improvisation. Haas, drummer Jason Smart and bassist Reed Mathis, three instrumentalists possessed of joint musical intuition, sculpt an ornate latticework of interwoven sounds.

"I think our greatest accomplishment is that we're still here after all the shit we've been through," said Mathis. "The longer we play, the better we like our music. Our best show was last night's one."

Jacob Fred has been playing for more than 11 years now, evolving over hundreds of live performances. They were originally an eight-piece band, complete with trumpet, trombone, guitar and percussion. But they've learned that in music, less can mean more and simpler can mean better. The band gradually downsized to a trio.

"Do only what's necessary," Mathis advises. "The less people, the simpler it is. If you add people, the music becomes diluted."

This approach fits with a broader philosophy that Jacob Fred applies to their style of playing. Mathis uses terms like "non-action" and "non-soloist" when describing the group's methodology, referencing the Taoist exercise of doing nothing, yet leaving nothing undone. By reducing their numbers, they have achieved a grander sound.

"It's the ultimate projection of ego to be a soloist," said Mathis. "It's kind of a dead-end street to project all your power into making a spectacle of yourself. The best improvisation comes about through pure cooperation; improvisation where the goal is to support the other players and make a spectacle of a beautiful song."

Jacob Fred now has 10 albums out, many of which consist of live recordings. Brian Haas has been garnering recognition as a piano phenom. Jason Smart, who replaced original drummer Sean Layton after his death in 2001, keeps as busy with his sticks as Jack DeJohnette. On Walking With Giants, Mathis uses an octave-pedal-induced bass that soars through the ears' canals like an audible lightshow. But the truly remarkable thing is how all three players crystallize to produce one gleaming amethyst of sound.

The keys, drum and bass combo has become a popular form in modern jazz, claiming such innovators as Medeski Martin and Wood and The Bad Plus. But MMW has shown signs of drying up of late, and The Bad Plus cheapens its appeal by covering mainstream songs by Black Sabbath and Nirvana. The Odyssey, however, is in its musical prime. Haas, Smart and Mathis are sensitive to the dignity of the jazz tradition, but they also understand that a key component of that tradition is stemming out to explore virgin territory. In doing so, the trio has even drawn praise from legendary pianist Cecil Taylor, the grand master of improvisation, who personally thanked Haas for "pushing jazz forward in a brand new direction."

"Music goes into new directions because people go into new directions," explained Mathis. "We never want to sound contrived or predictable. The greatness of jazz is its spontaneity."

Eleven years is a long time to be on the road, but the members of Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey are still young, and they still attract a youthful audience. They may be one of the best things jazz has going right now, which raises the question of whether increasing success will expand the audience for jazz music. But Mathis acknowledged that jazz is only a loosely defined word.

"Nobody really knows what jazz is, and I don't think anybody's supposed to know. We want to expand the audience for what we do," he said. "Our goal is to honestly represent how we feel."