Maine’s freshest entry into the jazz scene is a quartet with a deliberately enigmatic name. “Aurora Jazz Project” began gigging in the Bangor area in early 2005 with the goal of breathing new life into jazz by taking it in some new and innovative directions.

With influences that range from Miles Davis to Weather Report to Derek Trucks, the members of the ‘Project each bring something to the sonic stew and take great pride in not sounding like a typical jazz quartet.

Their current set-list reflects the breadth of their musical experiences and tastes, as an intense and modal “Summertime” gives way to a funky reinterpretation of “Well You Needn’t”. Or maybe Shorter’s “Footprints”, or a percussive “Epistrophy”, or a smoking jazz waltz like “Afro Blue” or “The Saga of Harrison Crabfeathers”. At some festival gigs they have even dropped a jazzy intrepretation of the Allman Brothers’ “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed” on unsuspecting but appreciative audiences. At the “Full Circle Fair” they took their listeners from straight-ahead jazz to somewhere “beyond” in one set.