The Ever-Evolving Style of Miles Davis : Jazz: He’s been around for years, but his music continues to be vital. He and the current crop of musicians in his band play the Coach House tonight.

One of the reasons I like playing with a lot of young musicians today is because I find that a lot of old musicians are lazy . . . resisting change and holding on to the old ways. --Miles Davis, “Miles: The Autobiography”

A sizzling keyboard anthem dissolves into a mess of percussion, frying up in a fatback bass line. Edgy guitar chords stir through the brew. Miles Davis, blowing muted trumpet, stretches a bluesy line into something that almost resembles be-bop, then adds his own considered punctuation. The band behind him is as tight as Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Levi’s.

“My Funny Valentine” it ain’t. The tune, “Jilli,” off Davis’ latest album, “Amandela,” was written by the band’s newest member, percussionist John Bigham. The go-go style rhythm and dynamic contrasts of the piece are perfect for the kind of slick, backbeat-heavy attack Davis has favored over the last few years. Although Bigham wrote the tune and, along with Marcus Miller, gets a production credit, he wasn’t in the band when the album was cut. In fact, he’s not even a percussionist.

“I’m a guitarist first and foremost,” Bigham said in a phone interview earlier this week in Montreal, where the band was appearing. “Miles asked me about a percussionist and I referred him to a friend that never got back to us. Then I decided, wow, that I would really like to try to do it. I’d never played percussion before in my life, except on my songs, and I knew Miles likes the way I write.

“So I said to him, ‘Look, man, I can do the percussion. And he said, ‘Forget you, man.’ But then he began asking me how I would do it, and I told him I would use a sampler and other electronic percussion.”

Davis went for it. Bigham rehearsed one day with Davis’ drummer Ricky Wellman before heading out on the latest tour, which began with a stint on the island of Guadaloupe in the Caribbean, included few Canadian dates and continues tonight at the Coach House.

How does he like his new status as a part-time percussionist?

“Usually a percussionist will have all kinds of things sitting around,” Bigham said. “I don’t have to stay busy. I’m a ‘pocket’ player, I just stay in the pocket.”

Wellman, who’s been with Davis for almost three years, says Bigham fits well into the band’s rhythmic scheme. “Miles always wants things to be more simplified, and John is a great, simple-type player, just working in between the beats. That’s exactly what Miles is looking for, someone who won’t get in the way of the rhythm.”

The type of players Davis has surrounded himself with over the years has always influenced his musical direction. In his autobiography, he claims that he’d still be playing like those “old musicians” if not for the influence of Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter and Tony Williams in the ‘60s. The sources from which he’s drawn the current crop of band members (saxophonist Kenny Garrett; guitarist Foley, who goes by just the one name; keyboardist Kei Akagi, and bassist Benny Rietveld round out the band) say a lot about his style of playing today.

Bigham, a 30-year-old Chicago native who has lived in Los Angeles for the last four years, has played guitar locally at underground clubs like Funky Reggae and Peace Posse with his own group, Big Thang. He also appears with the notorious 28-piece band Trulio Disgracious, which has played larger venues such as the Palace in Hollywood and includes members of Fishbone and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Drummer Wellman spent 11 years with the Washington-based group Chuck Brown and the Soul Searchers, which had a disco hit in 1978 with their album “Bustin’ Loose.”

Wellman has no illusions about being a jazz drummer.

“Miles heard my drumming on a tape a friend of mine gave him, and he really liked it. He called my home and sent me a couple of tapes with his material to work on. I knew who Miles was, but I hadn’t followed his music that closely. When we talked, I expressed to him that I was no jazz drummer. He mentioned my tape and said, ‘You can play this kind of music, can’t you?’ So I learned it.”

For nearly 40 years, getting the call from Davis has been the stuff of legends. But the event seemed matter-of-fact for Los Angeles-based Kei Akagi, a keyboardist and synthesizer player who had worked with Al DiMeola, Jean Luc Ponty and the late Joe Farrell among others, in addition to leading his own band, Playroom, at clubs around L.A. Davis, who’s expressed high praise for his current keyboardist in recent interviews, called early in 1989.

“Miles lost both of his keyboardists at once,” Akagi explained. “I was recommended for the job through the grapevine by people who knew my work with DiMeola.”

Akagi learned the band’s material from a tape he was sent. Rehearsals, held before the band went out on the road, were usually low-key.

The keyboardist says that, because of his background, he has no trouble adjusting to the improvisational shifts and dynamic changes that are the trademark of Davis’ live performances.

“When you’ve been playing jazz as long as I have, you get a feeling for what parameters are going to stretch and which are going to stay intact. You know how to judge when to stay with the arrangement, and when to let it go.”

Being with Miles has obviously influenced the music of saxophonist Kenny Garrett. Garrett, always seen as more of a jazz purist because of his work with Mel Lewis, Woody Shaw, Art Blakey, early editions of the neo-bop group Out of the Blue and the Ellington Orchestra, has a new recording, “Big Ol’ Head,” on which Davis makes a guest appearance. The album is a lot more funky than the more mainstream recordings he did for the Dutch label Criss Cross. But then Garrett didn’t have his own American recording contract when he was playing straight jazz.

This fact hasn’t gone unnoticed by Bigham and Wellman.

“I’m not going into jazz,” Wellman said. “It doesn’t open doors. There’s just not a lot of sales in jazz. My direction is more commercial. I plan to record my own album someday, still play live and break into the big time.”

Bigham’s association with Davis has led to more specific developments.

“Miles has opened up a door for me at Warner Bros. . . . I hope to be doing my own album soon; it’s in the works. And it’s all due to this thing with Miles.”

Miles Davis and his band play tonight at 8 and 10:30 at the Coach House, 33157 Camino Capistrano, San Juan Capistrano. Tickets: $29.50. Information: (714) 496-8930.