Terje Rypdal at Le Poisson Rouge Terje Rypdal The Norwegian jazz-rock guitarist making a rare American appearance at Le Poisson Rouge on Wednesday. Terje Rypdal began his third piece at Le Poisson Rouge on Wednesday night with a solo fanfare on his electric guitar, bracing and imperious. Playing in a brusque but gleaming tone, he parceled out phrases of irregular shape, sidestepping expectation. Then drums and Hammond B-3 organ kicked in, and a melody heaved into gear. It was "Per Ulv Spiller Luftgitar," which means "Wile E. Coyote Plays Air Guitar" in Norwegian, Mr. Rypdal's native tongue. With its somberchords and steroidal attack, it conveyed the rude pomposity of early prog-rock, rejiggered to precise and nimble effect. Mr. Rypdal, 64, has made a career out of such maneuvers - "Per Ulv" is the name of a theme he introduced in the 1970s ] - but he has also worked in orchestral and other sweeping settings, making music that scans as darkly cinematic. Next month the German label ECM is due to release "Odyssey: In Studio & In Concert," a three-CD box set that expands on his chamberlike 1975 album "Odyssey," adding a previously unissued live recording made with the Swedish Radio Jazz Group the following year. That concert recording, of a suite Mr. Rypdal titled "Unfinished Highballs," highlights how early he was in using large-canvas arrangement to express his ideas. But the clincher of the new reissue is "Rolling Stone," a long, immersive cut that was left off the LP version of "Odyssey" only to become a cult object for bootleg-hoarding fans. Sprawled out over a spacey bass ostinato, groovy but unhurried, it's a lost classic of cool-tempered jazz-funk, a Nordic adaptation of the attitude struck by Miles Davis and Joe Zawinul on "In a Silent Way." There were a few similar coordinates during Wednesday's sold-out stand, part of a rare foray into the United States. Along with the working band that appears on his most recent ECM release, "Crime Scene" - Palle Mikkelborg on trumpet, Stale Storlokken on organ and Paolo Vinaccia on drums - Mr. Rypdal pushed a mixed agenda of knockabout jazz-rock, neon atmospherics and celestial grooves. It was willful even in its gauzier moments, as when Mr. Mikkelborg was projecting a stern melody in his pristine and quietly piercing tone, cushioned by reverb and by Mr. Storlokken's churchly hum. What was missing were signs of an expedition, some sense that Mr. Rypdal was reaching for something other than well-tested strategies. There was potent shtick in his solo on "Memory Lane," with its Van Halen-style finger-tapping over a dramatic rubato; there was calculated grit in "Tough Enough," a throwback jazz-rock shuffle. Roteness wasn't his problem alone: Mr. Mikkelborg, for all his expressive poetry, often seemed like the victim of his own typecasting. Mr. Vinaccia's big moment was a thunderous drum solo against a sampled collage of dialogue from New Hollywood movies like "The Godfather" and "Taxi Driver," an act of warmed-over postmodernism that also appears on "Crime Scene." The outlier and catalyst was Mr. Storlokken, who marshaled his array of timbres deftly and without ingratiating flourish. He wrung deep suspense from a slow series of chords at the end of "Sinatra Never Left the Building." And he brought a spooky sci-fi abstraction to an untitled piece of his own making, seemingly groping his way forward in the dark. It was weird, and it worked. Terje Rypdal performs on Friday at the Rochester Jazz Festival; rochesterjazz.com.