Steve Sedergreen.

Steve Sedergreen.

STEVE Sedergreen knew he was being ''a bit naughty'' gatecrashing Herbie Hancock's after-show party. But words of wisdom from a bona fide jazz keyboard giant are hard to come by and the boy from Box Hill will never forget what they were.

''I like your shoes,'' Hancock told him.

''That's how they work, the real jazz guys,'' Sedergreen says. ''They don't tell you anything. Not because they don't want to but because it's up to you to find your own thing.''

It's 40 years since his father, Australian jazz legend Bob Sedergreen, inspired little Steve to strike his first piano notes.

His past 25 years as a player, composer, club booker and educator have made him a cornerstone of the local scene, leading his long-running outfit Mistaken Identity and helping newcomers such as Paris Wells and the Cat Empire find their own paths.

All of which makes Points in Time, the first album under his own name, a work of some significance. Its 12 tracks span from recent solo improvisations to some of his earliest compositions as a teenager, reinterpreted with the wisdom of hindsight.

''This time last year I found myself going through all my old cassettes and all the different gigs I've done,'' he says. ''I started thinking, 'That track wasn't bad. I wonder how I'd play it now'.

''I've always been a team player, I suppose. It's getting to the stage where I want to be an improvising solo piano player. And that's really what this album is trying to say.''

Its broad sweep from exuberant funk to deeply contemplative solo pieces is both a stocktake and a precursor to what Sedergreen clearly hears coming. The key is a concept he calls ''deep listening'', an esoteric idea with a practical application outlined in his book published last year, Start Playing Jazz Piano Now!

''Music is very tribal,'' he says.

''It gets back to very simple things like storytelling, rhythm and trance state. There's other ways of knowing.''

It sounds, to the incompletely educated, attractively mystical.

''It's not mystical,'' he insists. ''We want it to be mystical, but it's not. It's inclusive. It's being in tune. When I make a decision as an improviser, in some ways it's made around me. I'm in tune. We all are in tune. And I'm able to articulate that as a musician.''

So what did his father say about this book?

''He said, 'Don't write a book. Count the notes on the piano.'''

Herbie Hancock would approve.

''Jazz means being a free spirit, to me,'' Sedergreen says. ''Every decision I make is to do with something around me, rather than with prefixed ideas. I do practice fixed. But when I perform, I'm open. And sometimes I fall flat on my face. It's reflective but it's also about accumulated experience. It's a journey.''

The Steve Sedergreen Band plays Bennetts Lane on Sunday. Points in Time is out on Newmarket.