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• Jazz Kitchen

Happy Apple

Anyone who spotted the name "Happy Apple" on the Jazz Kitchen's marquee Wednesday night and walked in expecting some easy listening was soon disabused of that notion.

It was a fascinating single set that the trio from Minneapolis began late but eagerly. The music pointed out a distinct direction for post-fusion jazz, full of manic energy and inexplicable calms, picking up aspects of decades-old avant-garde while hooking up with a jumpy pop sensibility.

Anchored to the flamboyant, eccentrically paced drumming of David King, Happy Apple presented an array of original tunes, saddled with titles that toy with the arbitrariness of all titles. King is also the drummer for the Bad Plus, international stars of playfully forward-looking jazz who also scatter word games across their repertoire.

In "Rise, Marc Antony," saxophonist Michael Lewis and King presented a gleaming duo phalanx before Erik Fratzke's bass guitar joined in, the effect being of a glitzy Hollywood epic of ancient Rome as staged by street musicians. At other times, the bafflement provoked by a title ("Hence, the Turtleneck," for instance) was merely seconded by the music.

The peak of the 90-minute performance was "Creme de Mont Quasar," one of the few Happy Apple offerings that dared to lay out a groove, with Lewis switching to a plaintive alto sax from his usual tenor. The piece meandered into a country-flavored section, recalling the folkish side of such past jazz adventurers as Jimmy Giuffre and (early) Ornette Coleman, before the groove re-established itself winningly.

King's drumming, the artistic focus of Happy Apple, has a way of seeming still to be an acquired taste long after you think it's won you over. He can be disconcertingly explosive and reflective within the same few beats. A rarely employed, yet effective, light touch can pester your ears like a mere tease.

Yet his powerhouse norm doesn't allow you to be swept smoothly along, either, though he came close in the droll "Viking-Cuban" blend the group calls "Lefse Los Cubanos" and in the surging "1976 Aquatennial Parade," with its exquisite fadeout representing the vanishing marchers.

Full of big-city sass and assertiveness, Happy Apple doesn't mind ranging near the sodden suburbs of kitsch, as in "Broadside of the Silent Barn." At least its daydreams are just cryptic enough to avoid many well-worn dreamlike pathways. And if it keeps throwing mystery at you, its aim is startlingly good.

Visit Happy Apple's Myspace page here.