Jazz musician Micah Herman leans his long body low over his upright bass. His plucking fingers are a blur on the thick strings. The sound he creates is swampy one second, buoyant and bouncy the next.

Soon, his solo dissolves into the groove created by his band mates, drummer Doug Hitchcock, 50, and guitarist Myles Gorham, 24. The song isn’t over, but the audience applauds.

The egg-yolk yellow interior of YJ’s Snack Bar, 128 W. 18th St., is tiny and packed, the sole table crammed with a boys’ soccer team. A handful of twenty-something couples take in the show from tables outside. A gray-haired man in a suit stands at the counter, and a tattooed waitress in cowboy boots navigates the tight walkways between Herman’s bass and the soccer kids’ table, toting grilled cheese sandwiches and hot cocoa on a tray under the watchful eyes of John F. Kennedy, who stares out from his dusty, crooked portrait above the piano.

Dave Ford, the bandanna-wearing owner of YJ’s, runs the cash register. When the mood strikes, he spurs the band on with kind shouts: “I think that stuff’s going to catch on, that whole jazz thing.”

Herman, 33, leads this informal yet regular jazz jam session, which takes place at 8 p.m. Sundays at YJ’s. The Micah Herman Quartet’s specialty? Tweaking jazz standards until they feel fresh again.

“A lot of jazz is like, you play the melody once or twice, then you solo,” Herman says. “Maybe we’ll stick a bass solo first or play a different signature. Put a hip-hop beat behind it.”

Herman, who grew up in Kansas City with “Dizzy Gillespie and Count Basie and the baddest jazz musicians in the fuckin’ world,” is one of many young jazz musicians in the area who are making the century-old medium relevant to a new generation of fans. These new musicians have roots in jazz tradition and branches all over the place — in hip hop, world and electronic music and the avant-garde.

Take it from Stan Kessler, 56, a prominent KC trumpeter with regular gigs at jazz clubs like Jardine’s Restaurant and Jazz Club and The Blue Room.

“Part of the Kansas City consciousness is that jazz is cool,” Kessler says. “What’s taking a new direction is people are more willing to take risks. The people wanting to take risks are the young guys.”

A signpost of this trend is the late-night jazz series that began this spring at Jardine’s, 4536 Main St. near the Country Club Plaza. The series has showcased young artists such as Miles Bonny, John Brewer, Brandon Draper, Shay Estes, Mark Lowrey and Mark Southerland, who heads up the experimental group Snuff Jazz.

The late-night series is curated by Carrie Brockman, 32, and Jeff Simon, 29, who both work at Jardine’s. Simon and Brockman say the series serves many purposes: It cultivates young musicians, it brings crowds in from 11 p.m. to 3 a.m. and, well, it might just help the Kansas City jazz scene evolve.

The late-night series is a bit of a departure for Jardine’s, which has always been a strictly traditional jazz club.

“It’s a period of growth, and we want everyone to come along with us,” Brockman says.

Simon cites a new form of jazz, which uses hip-hop beats.

“It’s a progression of where the music can go,” he says. “The more that has an outlet, the more it could inspire other people. We could really get something going.”

“This place has been a certain way for a long time. And it’s time for something new,” Brockman says.

Shay Estes, 27, calls Jardine’s “the homeroom” for young musicians in Kansas City.

Estes, a jazz singer, is usually backed by Mark Lowrey on the piano, Jeff Harshbarger on bass and Zack Albetta on drums.

The group rearranges tunes by Radiohead, Tom Waits, The Church and The Beatles, “because how many times can you do the same jazz standards over and over?” Estes says.

“It’s all about embracing what you love,” Harshbarger explains. “It’s really what an artist is supposed to do. There really isn’t room to say, ‘I only listen to jazz.’”

“Some of the older guys don’t get it. That’s a taste issue,” Harshbarger says. “I think it’s great. The reason (jazz) stays alive is because it changes and grows.”

Harshbarger, 33, is a full-time musician. He also plays bass in Snuff Jazz and Wee Snuff, arguably the most out-there jazz outfit in town.

At Wee Snuff shows, Harshbarger and his fellow musicians don elaborate costumes, sit at school desks and play miniature instruments among flashing LED lights. Sometimes, models dressed in horn sculptures prance around and photograph the show.

Josh Adams, 26, plays drums in Snuff Jazz and rock band Ghosty. With jazz, he says, “there’s really no limits.”

“It kind of opens our mind to different avenues,” Adams says. The other guys in Snuff Jazz, he adds, “are so open-minded that anything goes…we kind of show up not knowing what is going to happen.”

Thirty-nine-year-old Mark Southerland — saxophonist, horn sculptor and ringleader of the two groups — sees his craft as hybrid art, not just music.

“It’s kind of like some weird cult has come in and is performing some strange ceremony,” Southerland explains. Stringent jazz purists, he adds, sometimes don’t get it. He considers that a good thing.

“Good art,” he says, “wins some people over and pisses other people off.”

Southerland is certainly winning people over: Last month, Southerland was one of three recipients of the Charlotte Street Awards for Generative Performing Artists, a new program in Kansas City. His prize? $5,000.

“The theatrical elements of his performances,” says Charlotte Street panelist Paul Rudy, an associate professor and coordinator of composition at the University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory of Music, “add a whole new layer of profound social commentary. … He’s breaking boundaries where no one knew they existed.”

Matt Hopper, a 26-year-old local guitarist, was at Jardine’s the first night Snuff Jazz played there early this spring. Snuff Jazz followed traditional jazz diva Ida McBeth.

“Snuff Jazz, those guys are going for sound effects,” Hopper says. “They bring in the downtown, Westport crowd...A lot of people left, because it was like apples and oranges.”

Hopper plays a regular Tuesday night show at Harlings Upstairs Bar and Grill, 3941 Main St., with John Brewer, Mark Lowrey and a group of UMKC students. Collectively, they’re called The New Jazz Order Big Band.

Brewer, a Kansas City firefighter and prolific jazz musician, collaborates often with drummer Brandon Draper. Together, they’re the two-man, multi-instrument, electro-acoustic band Organic Proof.

Brewer and Draper also play in more traditional jazz acts: the John Brewer Trio and the Brandon Draper Quintet. Organic Proof, though not exactly jazz, provides another example of jazz artists exploring uncharted territory.

The duo recently performed at an upscale fundraising event in the West Bottoms. The set was 100 percent improvised. Draper played drums and an arsenal of unconventional instruments: a marimba, a cast-iron skillet, a high hat with an ornamental rubber hand on top that waves with every cymbal smash. At one point, he rang a triangle as if it were lunchtime on the farm.

Brewer — who happens to be named after John Coltrane — mostly stuck with the keyboard but also dabbled with the marimba and a candy-apple-red keytar.

Starting in July, Organic Proof will hold monthly gigs at the Replay Lounge in Lawrence with Miles Bonny, a KC music maker with a background in both jazz and hip hop.

Bonny’s father, professional jazz trumpeter Francis Bonny, played in East Coast jazz bands when Bonny was a kid. Bonny, 27, became hooked on hip hop as a teen. Now he plays the trumpet at gigs and produces hip hop. He’s also a member of The Innatesounds Crew. If you hear the group’s first album, “Alpha,” you’ll recognize Bonny’s looped horn sounds among the hip-hop beats.

Every Friday night, Bonny DJs at Spitfire Wine Bar & Grill, 1809 W. 39th St. The tunes he plays are “soul, funk, jazz, trunk dunk and skunk,” he says.

Bonny also recently performed with Innatesounds Crew member Smoov Confusion at Jardine’s. The pair sang and rapped over classic jazz tracks from artists like Coltrane, and Bonny even brought out his trumpet a few times.

Bonny says the KC jazz scene is a bit disjointed.

“People play in pockets, like The Blue Room, Jardine’s, Mutual Musicians Foundation. But it’s not connected,” Bonny says. “There’s no unity. It’s just kind of a mess.”

He owns the rights to savejazz.com, and he’s thinking about building the Web domain into an online hub for local jazz artists and fans. Bonny’s done that before: In 2002, as a University of Kansas junior, Bonny founded lawrencehiphop.com — now hiphopkc.com — to connect local artists with their audience.

Someone has to do it, he says. All you ever hear about is jazz history, Bonny says. But what about what’s going on right now?

“Kansas City never had many selling points,” Bonny says. “The barbecue is good, that’s legitimate. But why promote the history of jazz? History only does so much for you.” Local jazz artists, he says, need to innovate.

That’s precisely what’s happening. Young jazz artists — though they’re bucking tradition — are actually participating in the biggest jazz tradition of all: innovation.

“If you are going to go into jazz,” Micah Herman advises, “for God’s sake, say something. Just don’t do what’s been done before.”

Two weeks of jazz

Thursday: Snuff Jazz, 10:30 p.m. at the Eighth St. Taproom, 801 New Hampshire St. in Lawrence. $3, with additional donations accepted.

Friday: Megan Birdsall, 9 p.m. at Jardine’s Restaurant and Jazz Club, 4536 Main St. $5. At 10 p.m., check out the Malachy Papers show (featuring Mark Southerland) at Davey’s Uptown, 3402 Main St. Cost TBD. At 12:30 a.m., there’s a John Brewer Solo DJ show at Jardine’s. Free.

Saturday: Mark Lowrey and Shay Estes, 11:30 p.m. at Jardine’s. Free. Later that night, check out the Matt Hopper Trio Late Night Jam Session, 1 a.m. at the Mutual Musicians Foundation, 1823 Highland Ave. Free.

Sunday: YJ’s jazz session featuring Micah Herman, 8:30 p.m. at YJ’s Snack Bar, 128 W. 18th St. Free.

Monday: Name That Tune with Mark Lowrey, 10:30 p.m. at Jardine’s. Free.

Tuesday: Jazz Poetry Jams (featuring Kynan “Yep” Ramsey), 7 p.m. at The Blue Room, 1616 E. 18th St. ($5) Later, catch the New Jazz Order Big Band (with Matt Hopper, John Brewer and Mark Lowrey), 9 p.m. at Harling’s Upstairs Bar & Grill, 3941 Main St. Free.

May 21: Stanton Kessler with Horace-Scope, 7:30 p.m. at Jardine’s. Free. Organic Proof, 8 p.m. at JP Wine Bar and Coffee House, 1526 Walnut St. Free.

May 22: Stanton Kessler with Sons of Brazil, 7:30 p.m. at Jardine’s. Free.

May 23: “The Sauce” featuring DJ Miles Bonny, 10 p.m. at Spitfire Wine Bar & Grill, 1809 W. 39th St. Free.

May 24: Organic Proof, 11:30 p.m. at Jardine’s. Free. Later on, listen in on the Matt Hopper Trio Late Night Jam Session, 1 a.m. at the Mutual Musicians Foundation. Free.

May 25: YJ’s jazz session with Micah Herman, 8:30 p.m. at YJ’s Snack Bar. Free.

May 27: Brandon Draper New Quintet, 7 p.m. at Jardine’s. Free. New Jazz Order Big Band, 9 p.m. at Harling’s Upstairs. Free.

May 28: Shay Estes, 7:30 p.m. at Jardine’s. Free. Beau Bledsoe and Brandon Draper, 8 p.m. at JP Wine Bar. Free.