The Eric Revis Trio, in its current form, is a young band that has already started to cut its path toward a rare and mystifying cohesion. One moment that suggested as much on Wednesday night, in an impressive opening set at the Jazz Gallery, landed near the homestretch, after about an hour of alert collective improvisation.

That moment almost shouldn’t have worked at all. At the piano, Kris Davis dropped harmonically restive chords in a counterintuitive march step that Gerald Cleaver, rustling around his drum kit, implicitly called into question. Mr. Revis, bowing his bass with fidgety elegance, struck a tone of mournful calm, his solo functioning as both a stand-alone dramatic statement and a fulcrum for the actions of the others.

From one angle, this trio represents the logical extension of a dialogue between Mr. Revis and Ms. Davis, who was featured on his most recent release, “City of Asylum” (Clean Feed), one of the better albums of 2013. The drummer on that recording, Andrew Cyrille, is an avant-garde eminence whose watchful, flowing pulse has had more than a casual influence on Mr. Cleaver’s own intuitive style.

It’s also reasonable to see the trio — which played two nights at the Jazz Gallery in preparation for a recording session — as a deeper dive into free-form territory for Mr. Revis. A bassist with a strong rhythmic compass and a stout, beefy tone, he works just as often in mainstream as in experimental settings. (In the coming weeks he’ll be on the road with both the Branford Marsalis Quartet and the Kurt Rosenwinkel New Quartet.)

There were wisps of written material scattered throughout the 75-minute set, none yet bearing titles. One minor-key ballad with a sinuous bass ostinato evoked the dusky mood of certain works by Sun Ra.

Another scrap, a two-bar vamp, effectively gave Mr. Cleaver and Ms. Davis a scaffolding for their improv gymnastics. The only full-blown composition was Paul Motian’s “Victoria,” a sober hymn whose melody unfurled on both piano and bass, in slow-drift octaves.

But the skill set of this trio meant there was always a degre