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THE ACOUSTICS at the new Real Deal Jazz Club in East Cambridge are "live," and the Danilo Pérez Trio really worked them last Thursday in the first of a two-night engagement. At times, they seemed to be trying to see how quietly they could play. And indeed, every note, every cymbal splash, sounded clearly. Pianist Pérez has been performing with bassist Ben Street and drummer Adam Cruz for several years now, and they’re at that stage — like the Brad Mehldau Trio — where words are unnecessary, and so are tunes. Pérez would just start, usually with long solo chordal expositions. Street or Cruz would join him or not. When an audience member asked the name of the second tune, Pérez thought about it for a few seconds, and someone suggested Dizzy Gillespie’s standard "Con Alma"; Pérez agreed but pointed out that a bit of Thelonious Monk’s "Ugly Beauty" was in there too. Late in the set, Pérez announced another standard, "Bésame Mucho," but his solo performance only skirted the tune.

So what did they play? Pérez came on the scene as the young Panamanian protégé of Dizzy Gillespie, the new face of Afro-Latin-jazz fusion. At this point, he’s grown way beyond that to a place beyond category. An Afro-Latin pulse still undulates beneath his excursions — as do those tunes — but no one in the mainstream is playing more freely than this trio. Pérez performed many unaccompanied fantasias in that late set, and I don’t think Street played a walking-bass figure all night. Cruz was a model of restraint and exactitude, never overplaying, using every timbre available — bare hands on snare, a light 4/4 tap on a closed hi-hat, tocking sticks on rims — to spell out metric patterns, then shift, always with an ear to where Pérez was at.

Pérez favored chordal ruminations, or he created beautiful independent voicings — a growling tremolo in the left hand as a quizzical melody in the right pecked up into the toy-piano range of the treble. His touch is infinitely flexible — a phrase might begin with a staccato forte figure before melting away to a couple of barely struck notes. Yet another voice. At times, his harmonies — lovely pastels with off-sour dissonances in their resolution — and his tonal range suggested Ravel. And I don’t mean the Ravel of Bolero but the Ravel of solo piano pieces like Gaspard de la nuit and Miroirs. That said, the trio did take some stretches of hard, fast, pulse-driven swing, and there was tension and drama even during the slowest free-tempo passages. There’s no one out there like Pérez right now — and, hey, the guy lives in South Boston.

ANYWAY, COMPARISONS ARE INVIDIOUS. The first time I listened to bassist Bruno Råberg’s new Chrysalis (OrbisMusic), I thought: Birth of the Cool. Why not? A nonet with low brass and broad, impressionistic harmonies — what was I supposed to think of other than Miles Davis’s classic 1949–’50 recordings? But when I called Råberg at his home in Lexington, he was kind enough to point out, politely, the error of my ways. "I always loved that sound, but this is different. I have the flute, so it’s brighter on top." True, Miles — with collaborators like Gerry Mulligan and Gil Evans — used French horn and tuba. Råberg uses that flute, two trombones, trumpet, two saxophones, guitar, bass, and drums. What’s more, "Those melodies [on Birth of the Cool] are usually all swing, and the melodies move with these eighth-note patterns, and they’re harmonized in a certain way to create the tuba-band sound, but I’m not doing that so much; my melodies are more broken up. That’s why it sounds different, I think." Yes, there is more fragmentation here, and more contrapuntal knottiness.

Whatever, it’s wonderful. So never mind that alto-saxophonist Allan Chase has a bit of Lee Konitz in his light, darting lines, or that Phil Grenadier, outstanding in his solo feature in "Nightfall," conjures Miles’s understated lyricism. Råberg works in longer, multi-part forms rather than in Cool’s concise pop-song structures. The final two tunes of the nine-track set are arranged for saxophones, trumpet, drums, and bass only — and the performances are raw and abstract, not the Miles nonet at all. If anything, Råberg, who in the past has recorded as a leader in smaller groups, says he’s reaching back to the Boston little big band Orange Then Blue, of whom he was a member in the ’80s. That band drew dual inspiration from Evans and Mingus, and Råberg says he wanted to work with those kinds of harmonies again.

At Ryles this Wednesday, Råberg will be joined by Grenadier, flutist Anders Boström, saxophonists Chase and Jeremy Udden, trombonists Jeff Galindo and Pete Cirelli, guitarist Mick Goodrick, and drummer Marcello Pellitteri. He says the band will play some material from the new album but also some standards and "unarranged" material. "I don’t want it to be too much of a reading gig. We have so many talents in the band, I just want to let everyone loose."

The Beat Circus play with Rev. Glasseye and His Wooden Leg, Curtis Eller, the Sob Sisters, and DJ Hazard next Thursday, September 30, at 9:30 p.m. upstairs at the Middle East, 472 Massachusetts Avenue in Central Square; call (617) 497-0756. The previous night, September 29, they play with Eller, Black Cat Burlesque, and Alec K. Redfearn & the Eyesores at AS220, 115 Empire Street in Providence; call (401) 831-9327. Also on September 29, Bruno Råberg Nonet plays Ryles Jazz Club, 212 Hampshire Street in Inman Square, starting at 8:30 p.m.; call (617) 876-9330.