JAZZ MUSIC REVIEW : McLaughlin Scales Another Creative Peak : His trio’s Peppers Golden Bear set combined creative synergy and musical risk-taking--with the net result even greater than the sum of its varied parts.

John McLaughlin has had so many achievements in his long career that it’s hard to imagine him finding another peak to climb. Yet his current trio--with Trilock Gurtu on percussion and Kai Eckhard on bass--is producing music easily in a class with some of his finest past accomplishments.

Friday night at Peppers Golden Bear in what was, regrettably, the group’s only recent local appearance, McLaughlin and his associates played a set that bristled with creative interaction. It was a performance in which one was constantly aware of the musicians’ efforts to reach out and stretch their skills.

The connections between the players were both intuitive and visual. Gurtu sat on the floor, Indian drummer-style, behind a cymbal-rich collection of instruments. His movements never seemed to stop, touching, stroking and striking his various implements--a mad scientist of percussion, black hair flying, mustache bristling, eyes sparkling. On the opposite side of the stage, McLaughlin--cooler-looking, smiling, more laid-back--worked his acoustic guitar, constantly reaching out to make electric eye contact with Gurtu and Eckhard.

McLaughlin mixed rapid-fire, Al Dimeola-like runs with snap-crackle chording and soaringly lyrical melody lines. His solo excursions were rich with sudden, dramatic changes of dynamics and broad strokes of bright primary musical colors. Yet, as abstract as some of his lines were, he could, on a piece like “One Night Stand,” abruptly shift gears into a series of hard-swinging, body-moving, funk/soul-driven choruses.

Gurta’s work verged on the remarkable. Firmly based in the extremely complex rhythms of Indian classical music, he demonstrated an equally masterful command of Western jazz drumming. On a six/four South American-inspired piece named after the Brazilian city of Belo Horizonte, he played a solo overflowing with a brilliantly unfolding series of rhythmic surprises.

Postioned between two such primal musical forces, bassist Eckhard devoted himself, for the most part, to a supporting role, balancing the other players’ flights to the outer limits with a solid rhythmic foundation.

The net result was an exquisite evening of contemporary jazz. The McLaughlin trio demonstrated, in its own unostentatious way, how convincingly jazz can incorporate a colorful assemblage of styles, influences and attitudes under its mantle of creativity. And that’s exactly the message McLaughlin has been working on--with continuing effectiveness--for years.