Craig Taborn, a keyboardist of exploratory temperament, is one of a handful of American musicians bringing steady refinement to the field. Five years ago he released Junk Magic (Thirsty Ear), a smart effort at cross-pollination that now sounds only slightly dated. Since then, working mainly as a featured sideman, he has upgraded his arsenal and sharpened his attack.
On Tuesday night Mr. Taborn revisited Junk Magic at the Stone, enlisting excellent partners for the task: not just the violist Mat Maneri and the drummer David King, who appear on the album, but also the tenor saxophonist Chris Speed and the bassist Erik Fratzke. They played their first set to a standing-room crowd heavily populated with fellow musicians, managing a potent clarity even in their more fractured exchanges.
Mr. Taborn, playing synthesizers, took no solos in the conventional sense. Junk Magic includes some splintered pianism, but here a grand piano served as furniture, supporting an array of effects pedals and sheltering a couple of laptop computers. Rare among jazz musicians though increasingly less rare, it seems Mr. Taborn hails from the school of thought that places real aesthetic value on the act of turning a knob or twisting a dial.
His scrupulous restraint served the music, which ranged in tone from wakening calm (on a song that sounded like The Golden Age, from the record) to woozy instability (Mystero, with a fluttering melody indirectly indebted to Indian music). Mr. Speed and Mr. Maneri each indulged in the occasional burst of improvisation, but their core purpose was as a front line, playing in a knowingly imperfect unison. Mr. Fratzke, on electric bass, compounded the mystery with dark, yawning drones, at one point using a slide.
Craig Taborn will perform in an acoustic trio with the drummer Gerald Cleaver and the bassist William Parker on Friday at the Stone, Avenue C and Second Street, East Village; thestonenyc.com.
