Review: Robert Glasper at World Cafe Live

Before playing a single note, before even sitting down at the keyboards at World Cafe Live on Thursday night, Robert Glasper's first order of business was to ask for the stage lights to be dimmed. "We like it kind of sexy," he insisted.

Vibe and atmosphere are all-important to the Robert Glasper Experiment. The quartet, which serves as the electric complement to Glasper's slightly more traditional acoustic trio, exists as a permanent jam session, tackling every tune with a sprawling, exploratory looseness.

Guests are a given, as with the host of hip-hop and neo-soul luminaries that appear on the Experiment's new album on Blue Note, Black Radio: Yasiin Bey (formerly known as Mos Def, for whom Glasper moonlights as musical director), Lupe Fiasco, Erykah Badu and Ledisi.

Without that roster of heavy hitters in the house, the Experiment's set reached into a grab bag of tunes from across genres, with saxophonist Casey Benjamin intoning John Coltrane's "A Love Supreme" and singing Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" through a vocoder, sending his vocals screaming into laser-blast crescendos. That tune grew out of a lyrical, extended bass solo by Derrick Hodge, who also held down the pulse on a version of Floetry's hit "Say Yes" - which he also played on the original recording.

Neo-soul crooner Bilal, a classmate of Glasper's at New York's New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music, joined the band in his hometown, reprising the blissed-out rendition of David Bowie's "Letter To Hermione" from Black Radio. Bilal reappeared at the end of the two-hour set to perform "All Matter," from Glasper's 2009 release Double Booked, as well as his own "Reminisce."

Halfway through Thursday's set, the 33-year-old keyboardist suddenly announced, "I have the urge to play some Dilla." And with that, Glasper launched into a heavy groove while Benjamin sang the lines from Bobby Caldwell's "Open Your Eyes," which the late, influential producer J Dilla sampled in rapper Common's hit "The Light."

It may sound a bit confusing to think of a jazz group covering hip-hop songs complete with soul samples, but Glasper regularly traipses over the borders between those genres. He has toured with Common and A Tribe Called Quest co-founder Q-Tip, and previous releases have found him mashing together Thelonious Monk with Dilla or Herbie Hancock with Radiohead. The rest of the Experiment is equally well-versed - virtuoso jazz musicians who can sustain deep grooves, which may explain the large and raucous crowd that turned out Thursday night.