Thor Christensen

FORT WORTH – What a difference eight years make.

When Wynton Marsalis played Bass Performance Hall in 2000 with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, he treated jazz as a museum object – something to be revered but not touched.

But a far more daring Mr. Marsalis played Bass Hall on Monday night. Three songs into his show with the JLCO and he was diving into the off-kilter funk of "Abyssinian 200," a new composition that flirted with the avant-garde.

Two songs later, the 15-man group got positively surreal with "Portrait in Seven Shades: Dali," which was written by band member Ted Nash. With trumpets speeding up and slowing down seemingly at random, it sounded like "Flight of the Bumblebee" after two bottles of cough syrup. For the Picasso segment of "Portrait," Mr. Marsalis tapped the spirit of John Coltrane with a long, frantic trumpet solo that turned the song into a bolero gone wild.

What, exactly, has gotten into Mr. Marsalis? It's hard to say, although it's possible he simply got sick of being criticized year after year for being too conservative.

Whatever the cause, it made for an engaging show full of twists, turns and no-holds-barred improvisation. For the encore, the band played a raucous tag-team jam, with each player winging it for 10 or 20 seconds.

Mr. Marsalis and company didn't totally do away with tradition. They found time for "I Left My Heart in San Francisco" and tunes by Gershwin and Duke Ellington, including "The Single Petal of a Rose," a showcase for bass clarinetist Joe Temperley, who at 78 is triple the age of several JLCO members.

But this was mostly a night of pushing boundaries, and near the end of the show, Mr. Marsalis posed the old question "Should jazz be played in concert halls?"

He never got around to answering it, but with music this bold, he can play anywhere he wants.

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