Spyro Gyra to Unveil Its New Material : Jazz fusion: Fresh from recording a new album called ‘Fast Forward,’ the band will also be breaking in a percussionist during shows at the Coach House.

Spyro Gyra is virtually jumping out of the recording studio onto the concert stage for performances tonight and Saturday at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano.

And that brings good and maybe some not-so-good news for the jazz fusion band’s fans.

“We’re actually a little rough, right now,” said group leader and saxophonist Jay Beckenstein. “These’ll be the very first concerts in which we’ll be playing all the new material. So the programs promise to be adventurous.”

The shows will preview material from the group’s next album, “Fast Forward,” which will not be released until late May. In addition, the group is working in a new member, percussionist Mark Quinones, who brings significant new tonal colors to Spyro Gyra’s already multihued musical palette.

“It’ll be the first time we play this material outside a rehearsal hall, and that usually comes with pros and cons,” Beckenstein said. “On the plus side, the band is excited and trying extra hard to make everything work. On the other side is the possibility that an occasional musical train wreck can be anticipated.”

One of the biggest challenges facing Spyro Gyra in recent years has been competition that didn’t exist when the group arrived on the scene out of Upstate New York more than a decade ago. The woods have been full of Spyro-like groups in the last few years, some of them performing with considerable success.

“Yeah, there’s been a real proliferation of music down our end of the pike, a lot of it very dull,” Beckenstein said. “At first, I thought, ‘Gee, this is kind of interesting; there’s a whole bunch of bands trying to sound like us.’ But in the long run I’m proud that despite all these acts that have been striving for the same piece of the marketplace, our success has been steady. . . .

“The real challenge is to make sure we don’t repeat ourselves to come up with some new twists every time we come out with a new album, both for the musicians and for the audience.

“On the new release, for example, I played a lot of tenor in an effort to get away from the alto sound. And it’s interesting, that when I started working on tenor, it was wonderful. All of a sudden it was like a whole new world of sound--Coltrane, Getz--opened up. The tenor evoked a whole different set of imagery that helps give the album a different perspective.”

Like many contemporary instrumental performers, Beckenstein sees recording and playing concerts as mutually supportive activities. Spyro Gyra plays about 100 concerts a year in a schedule that usually includes a European tour. Add individual recordings by some of the group members--mallet player Dave Samuels is on his third; keyboardist Tom Schuman is working on his first--and the annual Spyro Gyra recording, and, as Beckenstein puts it, “the time gets eaten up pretty good.”

The key to Spyro Gyra’s extraordinary commercial success, as well as to the maintenance of a busy schedule, has been balance.

“Early on in our career,” Beckenstein recalled, “we had a percussionist who danced around the stage. He’s no longer with us because it really felt a bit too entertainment-oriented.

“But we knew we had to balance the entertainment aspects of our show with the musical elements. When we were trying to figure out how to do it, I suddenly remembered something my high school English teacher once told me. He said, ‘The great thing about Shakespeare is that he offered high philosophy for the people in the front seats, a lot of romance and love for the merchants and the bourgeoise, and for the groundlings there were the sword fights and the ghosts.’

“That made sense to me--getting all the elements in balance, playing music that is challenging for the audience and stretches them a little bit, while still having enough ghosts and sword fights so that nobody gets bored,” he said.

“In all the years we’ve been doing this,” Beckenstein concluded, “I’ve never had to turn around to the band and say, ‘Well, we’re losing them, so we’d better play more simplistically; shorten the solos, do whatever.’ We’ve never had to tamper with the music. I guess I’m as proud of that fact as I am of anything we’ve ever done.”

Spyro Gyra will play today and Saturday at 8 and 10:30 p.m. at the Coach House, 33157 Camino Capistrano, San Juan Capistrano. Tickets: $21.50. Information: (714) 496-8930.