For Gerald Clayton, the gap between old-school stride piano and 21st-century neo-soul rhythms is no gap at all. While performing Monday at Kuumbwa Jazz Center in Santa Cruz, he would relax into one, and then flow straight into the other — a century of rhythmic information, from Teddy Wilson to D'Angelo, echoing through his introduction to "If I Were a Bell," the old standard. 　　 　　For the best young jazz musicians — Clayton is 26 — the music's long history isn't a stumbling block to expression. It's just a reality, a source of connections. It gets complicated, but the sorting-out process happens over time for a working band like Clayton's. It's "a trio of close friends," he told the audience. "These guys pretty much read my mind." 　　 　　Earlier in the evening, on Clayton's tune "3-D," the mind readers began very quietly: stretched out, minimalist lines from acoustic bassist Joe Sanders, again referencing neo-soul and hip-hop; lots of dancing definition from drummer Justin Brown, slipping in and out of multiple tempos; Clayton dropping little neural explosions into the mix with his own tangling and untangling lines. And then, stealthily, a groove emerged, a through-line, pulsing out of that big, heady mix of information: three dimensions had been focused down to one. 　　 　　Much of the time, the band felt like the meeting place of two worlds: mid-'60s Miles Davis filtered through the lens of neo-soul. That made for a spacious and trippy brew, the musicians like dancers in a very large room, circling each other — feinting and parrying, at times moving, it seemed, in opposition to one another. 　　 　　But over time, the big picture would emerge: They had been moving in the same direction all along, riding the same wave. A riff would emerge: Sanders and Clayton would lock it in, repeating it and repeating it, with Brown flipping into overdrive for an extended solo. He is a phenomenal drummer; a "simple" press roll can be a shock to the listener, like a spike of electric current through a circuit. 　　 　　Clayton — the son of L.A. bassist John Clayton — knows his jazz history, from Teddy Wilson on up. And you can hear it in his playing, in his warm-hued chords, knotty blues figures and century-shrinking rhythmic moves. He peppered his two sets with standards: Dizzy Gillespie's "Con Alma," Benny Golson's "Stablemates," Howard Dietz and Arthur Schwartz's "You and the Night and the Music." 　　 　　But he wasn't giving any history lessons. By the end of the night, the trio's meticulous language was in super-focus. This was jazz that pokes deep inside your brain; those neural explosions weren't just for the musicians. They were for the audience, too.