This is my first full-fledged dive into the Rogue Festival, and I was hoping to experience something that just dazzled me -- I found it Saturday night when drummer Steve Mitchell performed with a trio of outstanding Fresno musicians at the Severance theater.

In a too-brief set of mostly modern jazz, Grammy Award-winner Mitchell took the stage with pianist David Aus, saxophone player Ben Boone (who did some awesome, mean solo licks) and bassist Nye Morton. They opened with a full-throttled version of Stanley Turrentine's "Sugar" and then veered into other songs, such as Mongo Santamaria's "Afro Blue," with its euphonic quilt of African-Cuban rhythms.

They also featured a guest appearance by jazz vocalist Karen Marguth (and pianist Jason Wanner), who's next show is Sunday night (March 2) at Starline. She sang a lovely version of "East of the Sun."

My favorite of the night, though, was "Happy House" by Ornette Coleman, a whopper of improvised modern jazz that Aus later explained to me is what Coleman called "harmolodic." It is a free-wheeling style in which the musicians are in the moment and must listen as if in conversation. You could call it construction through abstraction: you don't need to know how it fits together ... you just let it run through you. The quartet dipped and weaved and angled and roared through that song, riding on the drive of Mitchell's percussion.

It was wondrous to hear ... and even more so when Aus later told me that they performed together for the first time at their first show on Friday night. That blew my mind.

At the end of the gig, the audience of about 60 people gave the quartet a standing ovation. As I said, they dazzled me, too.

Playing: 8:45 p.m. Friday and 10 p.m. Saturday (March 8) at Severance/Cal Arts Academy, 1401 N. Wishon Ave. Cost: $10. Rating: G