Adventurous fans of new music should dig on what singer Bobby McFerrin, pianist Chick Corea and drummer Jack DeJohnette are offering on their tour this spring; after all, the show is brand new every night, entirely improvised without the fallbacks of charts, familiar themes or pre-meditation. Those looking to hear anything from McFerrin and Corea’s recorded work — like their deservedly oft-played ‘80s-era rendition of “Round Midnight” or interpretations of Bach and Mozart — had better prepare.

“We’re just going to play these long, long improvs that can go from wherever,” McFerrin said from a Santa Barbara hotel room between tour stops. “I mean, I have no idea what the concert’s going to sound like when we’re in Indianapolis, but the audience can expect to be deeply, deeply challenged. They’re going to have to open up their ears and their hearts to hear what we’re doing. You’re pretty vulnerable when you’re looking for ideas in front of people.”

Constituent parts

Even if there won’t be familiar touchstones, neither will the trio make grating or unpleasant music: it’s not that breed of experimental music, and that’s not the nature of the challenge for performers or audience. To get an idea of how all three performers will sound together, let’s explore each of the constituent parts.

McFerrin lays down undulating vocal lines that draw on a chest and head voice while using the body as a percussion instrument (often by chest-pounding), pursuing miles of melody with different articulations, often a clean bell-like voicing or throaty hum. Without usually stopping for long on any one note and often repeating particular melodic lines — building on some and dispatching others — McFerrin’s non-linguistic explorations of the human voice are very listenable, and even allow for a groove when he stomps his foot or beats his chest.

When McFerrin and Corea have gotten together historically, they’ve explored jazz, various world musics and European classical, with McFerrin’s voice set against Corea’s flexible and bright acoustic piano and synthesizers. Corea, who has worked through “avant-garde” and bop periods, but has spent more time recently with fusion and classical adaptations of his best-known pieces, is also a performer who’s accessible on the surface because of his clean sound and taste for melody (compared to someone dense and difficult like Cecil Taylor), exploring ideas just as complex and original as anyone breaking laws of conventional tonality.

Finally, DeJohnette, like McFerrin and Corea, is capable of both exploring the limits of his instrument and providing solid backup in a funk rock or R&B setting. Further, he’s familiar with this completely improvised trio setting; while his work with pianist Keith Jarrett and bassist Gary Peacock usually draws on standards, they’ve recorded and performed original collective improvisations (notably 1987’s Changeless) that are melodically inventive and bring Jarrett’s lush and meandering solo piano work into a group context. (Not incidentally, McFerrin has said that hearing Jarrett’s solo concerts in the early ‘80s inspired his decision to go it alone as an improvising solo performer.)

A strong constitution

All three musicians could play unaccompanied for hours, but at least Corea and DeJohnette can sit behind a rig. If anyone is used to that vulnerable feeling of looking into an idealess void, it’s McFerrin, who has been striding on-stage with nothing more than a mic and unconventional concert attire (t-shirts, jeans, dreadlocks) for almost three decades, giving lengthy octave-tripping one-man shows.

“When I’m working in the solo context, I open up my mouth and I go,” McFerrin said. “And that’s really kind of hard to explain, some people don’t know what that means, ‘Open up my mouth and go.’ But that’s basically my approach as a singer. I open up my mouth, and the first thing that comes out, I’m committed to it, and I have no idea what it might sound like. It doesn’t matter what key it is, or what the feel of it is, or the rhythm, the tempo, emotional context.”

Put all three of these accomplished improvisers together and you have a group that’s just as good at listening as at playing. When asked what he’s learned from Corea, McFerrin lists some of those essential elements each player needs to master to improvise in this unfettered trio setting.

“How to be free; how to relax; how to let go,” McFerrin said. “The extraordinary thing about Chick is, no matter where I go, he’s right there. He’s got great ears. And Jack is the same way — it doesn’t matter where I go. I know that I’m working with musicians I can rely on to lift me up and help me to rest, so I don’t have to worry about anything, I don’t have to think about anything.”

All three of them support each other — “a cord of three strands is not easily broken,” says McFerrin. And they may go into whimsical places: according to the Los Angeles Times, for their April 18 date in Los Angeles, Corea and McFerrin staged a swordfight with drumsticks, called on the audience to sing a few lines and played a four-handed ragtime number on the piano, with each pianist running around each other to trade positions on the lower and upper end of the keys.

“It’s what I love to do,” McFerrin said. “It’s very scary; I mean, there are moments when you have no ideas. That doesn’t mean the music stops, but you just don’t know where to go. The other night, I remember that I spent long stretches of time just listening to what Jack and Chick were doing to just see what my place was…You have to be able to sit back and listen and see what’s going on.”

WHO: Bobby McFerrin, Chick Corea, Jack DeJohnette
WHERE: Clowes Hall, 4602 Sunset Ave.
WHEN: Friday, April 25, 8 p.m., $20-35, all ages