One of the better ideas I've had lately was to get Pat Metheny and Wynton Marsalis together for a roundtable discussion on the state of jazz today. It didn't happen, mind you, but if it had, it would have been fascinating: on one hand, you'd have Marsalis, the acoustic purist and keeper of the New Orleans flame whose belief is that jazz is and always will be the musical manifestation of African-American culture. Arguing a different view would be Metheny, a very electric guitarist whose opinion is that jazz embraces the whole world and whose touring septet encompasses three Caucasian-Americans, a Vietnamese-American, a Mexican, a native of Switzerland, and a Brazilian.

Up until recently, my sympathies would have naturally been with Metheny, a musical adventurer whose work I've admired for almost 30 years. But after Friday's concert, I'm starting to think that the curmudgeonly Marsalis might have a point, for whatever it is that Metheny is playing these days, it's only occasionally jazz.

That's particularly true of The Way Up, Metheny's new record and the hour-long opening movement of Friday's marathon show. The piece, which Metheny and band played in its entirety-and from memory-involves very little improvisation; instead, it's a kind of a suite of linked passages that are at once formidably dense and attractively dreamlike. It's also a ballet of sorts. In order to reproduce the layered sounds and shifting tempos of the record, Metheny kept jumping between electric, acoustic, sitar, and synthesizer guitars, while utility players Cuong Vu, Grégoire Maret, and Nando Lauria handled trumpet, harmonica, tuned and untuned percussion, keyboards, and an array of guitars that rivalled their leader's. Barring some technical problems with Metheny's wireless rig, the piece went off almost flawlessly, with drummer Antonio Sanchez keeping everything on track with his brilliantly nuanced power. But what it is remains in question: despite influences ranging from jazz to progressive rock to minimalism to symphonic music, and despite its Brazilian- flavoured melodic contours, The Way Up is more Metheny music than anything else.

I have to admit I was more taken with some of the older pieces that made up the second half of the long, intermission-free concert. To me, they breathe more than Metheny's new work, although that may be a function of the band's familiarity with them. Nonetheless, the guitarist has found a means of writing complex, personal music that still has mass appeal-an achievement even Marsalis would have to admire.