Onstage, the band members arrange themselves, left to right, from the deceptively stolid to the decidedly unhinged. Iverson is bald, goateed, besuited, and classically trained, and, when describing the tunes, he speaks in a spacey, Steven Wright monotone. One tune, Iverson gravely informed the Zankel audience, is about a bowler named Bernie. He lived in Queens in the seventies. Another tune was about a shy girl named Beryl. She s in high school and she hasn t, um, blossomed. But, um, you know.

The future awaits. And when she s alone in her room she really lets loose. Iverson s theatricality is mainly in his hands there is no Keith Jarrett moaning and keening, no Monk jig in his repertoire but every once in a while he will levitate from the piano bench, just a bit, as if in a momentary trance, and then, just as quickly, he snaps out of it and sits his ass back down.