Keiko Matsui’s Spiritual Quest for Music With ‘No Borders’ : Jazz: The Japanese musician doesn’t like labels applied to her works. It’s just as well, because the performer can easily go from fusion to rhythm and blues and to improvisational.

Keiko Matsui doesn’t look like the stereotypical jazz musician. But looks can be deceiving. Put the fragile-looking Japanese beauty on stage with a contemporary rhythm section, hang a portable keyboard over her shoulder, and the image changes to that of a high-voltage, energetic performer. Like her fellow musician from an earlier generation--Toshiko Akiyoshi--Matsui testifies to the remarkable global reach of jazz.

Matsui begins her first United States tour in a year tonight and Friday at Hamptons in Santa Ana. The key ingredient will be material from her new album, “No Borders.” It’s difficult to imagine a better title for Matsui’s eclectic music, which ranges from jazz fusion and rhythm and blues to straight-ahead improvising and what her husband and producer Kazu Matsui describe as “Medieval folk music.”

Keiko Matsui, however, is not particularly eager to place labels on her work. “Basically, the concept in all my albums has been the same,” she explained earlier this week. “The most important thing is the melody line. Different sounds are important, but sounds can get old, and good melody always is new. So I always try to find good melodies for my albums.”

Equally important is the strong spiritual quality she brings to all her creative efforts. “For me, music is a like a prayer,” Matsui said. “I want it to have a kind of spiritual element. On ‘No Borders,” there are several different styles--R&B;, progressive rock, movie score-type of pieces, jazz. But it is more important to me to have elements of nature in the music, too, because nature has some special magic, some quality which humans cannot understand or explain in words. I want that to be part of my music.”

Matsui’s search for creative originality and spiritual essence has led her down a determinedly original path. Kazu Matsui makes an appearance on “No Borders” with his shakuhachi flute--as he does on all her albums. But she has no desire to spice her recordings with self-conscious ethnic elements.

“On some tunes,” she explained, I like to use a special type of ethnic instrument, like the shakuhachi flute. But I don’t want to just do Japanese-style music. I like the sound of certain instruments, but this doesn’t mean I have to use the style of the music.”

“It’s funny,” she said, laughing. “Once, in Japan, an interviewer asked me if I used shakuhachi because I wanted to get into the United States--because it’s such a commercial sound. And I said, ‘No, I just like the instrument.’ ” She giggled again: “I’m not sure if he believed me.”

Like a number of other Japanese performers, Matsui is attracted to the free and easy atmosphere of the American music scene. “In Japan” she said, “there is a very job-like attitude: They say, ‘we will do a record from 10 until 4.’

“In the States, it’s very different. People must keep a schedule, but they are more relaxed, and they enjoy making music. In Japan it’s more like work. Some Japanese session players are like businessmen, with suits and ties.”

Nor is she particularly fond of the old-boy network that is indigenous to Japanese music. “In Japan, some groups of musicians make it hard for outsiders to get in,” she said. “There is always a role to play--either teacher or student, either respectable musician or new musician. Always there is a difference, and a distance--and it’s a kind of distance that is not so good. Here, it doesn’t matter if I’m recording for the first time or if I’m new. Everybody accepts me and we just make music together. This is the way it should be.”

Matsui, who was born in Tokyo in 1961, got an early start in music with classical piano lessons at the age of 5. She received another, equally important education, from a home in which she heard recordings of everything from movie soundtracks and Andre Previn to the Carpenters and Chick Corea.

After graduating from high school, she was selected for an advanced-studies program sponsored by the Yamaha Co., with whom she eventually signed as an artist representative. An all-female group called Cosmos was assembled around Matsui, and four albums were released on the Japanese Pony Canyon label.

It was not until she met her husband, however, that Matsui’s international career shifted into high gear. Her first American album, “A Drop of Water,” was produced on a $12,000 budget gathered from the couple’s honeymoon money, her father’s American Express card and the help and support of American musicians Carl Anderson and Robben Ford.

Matsui’s been on a high-speed professional roll since then. With a new album in the stores, an American and Japanese tour looming ahead for the rest of the year, she must carefully parcel out her time to include husband Kazu and their 2-year-old daughter, Maya.

But music will always be at the center of her life. “For me,” concluded Matsui, “making an album, making music--for me, it’s not just playing. It’s like painting a picture or writing a book. When I do a concert, my feelings grow and grow. And I try make those feelings go through my fingers and into the keyboard. Because when everything is just right . . . it is as though the music is the fire between earth and heaven.”

Keyboardist Keiko Matsui plays at 8 p.m at Hamptons, 3503 S. Harbor Blvd., Santa Ana. Tickets: $23.50. Also Friday. Information: (714) 979-5511.