The future of jazz is scary to think about sometimes.

Does it lie in the hands of the big names that have stolen it from the prestigious club basements and deposited it back into the dentist's office waiting rooms?

Or is it resting somewhere within the experimental grooves of the latest "jam band" to step onto the bandwagon?

It's hard to find jazz musicians that don't mind being background music for The Weather Channel anymore.

But all it could take is one group, one vessel through which the spirits of the past masters could flow to revive the beautiful, straight-from-the-heart sonic experiments of the past.

Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey might just be that group.

The members -- none of them named Jacob or Fred -- of the Oklahoma-based trio have been together since 1994, but only recently have they begun to gain recognition for their tight, off-the-cuff jazz.

The group's recent performances at summer festivals, like Berkfest in Massachusetts and the High Sierra Music Festival in California, have brought back the magic of a late 1960's Miles Davis electronic soundscape.

Consisting of keyboardist Brian Haas, drummer Jason Smart and bassist Reed Mathis, the Odyssey demonstrates an almost supernatural telepathy during its performances.

This is the kind of group that never plays a song the same exact way, leading to endless possibilities and the purest form of free-flowing musical expression possible.

The band can also boast some innovative musical ideas.

With Haas's uncanny ability to create realistic keyboard bass lines with his left hand while still relentlessly pounding out melodies with his right, Mathis is able to use various effects to explore the limits of his own bass, often turning it into some kind of electric-cello-from-hell lead instrument.

The improv does not, however, completely cut out all room for structure; in fact, some of the Fred's best moments are the distinguishable ones.

A song like "Vernal Equinox," although filled to its capacity with unpredictability during every performance, finds the group at its most beautiful and human.

The song structures itself around repetition of a reggae groove that crawls toward an explosively stunning rift.

But music fans that fear the pretension and snobbyness of talented improvisation and musical tributes to spring should not fear; the future of jazz has a sense of humor!

Case in point: the goofy, blues-based mayhem of "Thelonious Monk Is My Grandmother" Both a tribute to and renouncement of the traditional rules of jazz at the same time, the tune sounds like funky free-form cartoon music played by some kind of virtuoso clowns -- and I mean that in the best possible way.

Another example is "Muppet Babies Get Lost at the State Fair," a song whose music is just as eclectic as its title.

And while the Fred's improvisations might at first seem intimidating, it's hard to take them too seriously when Haas introduces a "song" with a made-up and seemingly unrelated title such as, "Wow, It's Great To Finally Be Playing At [insert venue name here]."

It's all there: the talent, the expression and the humanity.

All we can do for now is hope that Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey is, in fact, the future of jazz.

If so, maybe the trend will shift away from elevator music and back to the ideals set forth by the musical "grandmothers" of today's jazz superstars.