It’s suppertime in Amsterdam when I reach Dutch keyboardist and bandleader Cor Fuhler, but he willingly breaks off his meal, over my protests, to chat with Canada. Still, food is on both of our minds: Fuhler’s for obvious reasons, and mine because his Corkestra CD evokes in me an extraordinary synesthetic response. Sure, I can hear and enjoy the music, I tell him, but I can also taste it, and its flavour is both sweet and sour.

“That’s good,” he says, sounding pleased. “Good music should be a mix of various things: sweet and sour, bitter and sweet, or whatever. The best things to eat, they’re always a bit of everything. You know, if you’re making a dessert, you should throw in a tiny bit of some kind of salt, ’cause if you add a bit of salt to a sweet dish, it just gets much better. Even if you don’t taste it directly, it just makes all the other flavours come out much better—and in music it’s the same thing, really.”

Fuhler’s nine-piece Corkestra is a living embodiment of his maxim, including as it does Dutch jazz veterans Ab Baars and Tobias Delius on saxophones, postpunk guitarist Andy Moor, and new-music specialist Anne La Berge on flutes. But the most unusual flavours in the composer’s spice blend come from Nora Mulder’s cymbalom, a large hammered dulcimer popular in Eastern Europe. The instrument is not only rare in a jazz context, it’s also rarely in tune, which, for Fuhler, is just one more dimension to play with.

“It’s hard to tune it, and the harder you strike it the more out of tune it is,” he says. “But you just have to accept that. It’s fine; it’s just the way it is. And for me, ‘out of tune’ is not out of tune, really—it’s just another colour. You just have to go along with it, like if it rains it rains, and if it’s sunshine it’s sunshine. You just have to make the best of it, and that’s what you do.”

Fuhler’s ability to embrace different sounds and styles extends beyond Corkestra. He’s currently researching different ways of using electronics to drive the strings of his piano, maintains a collection of transistor organs from the 1960s, and sometimes accompanies his own songs on the guitar. Corkestra’s Vancouver appearance will be a great introduction to Fuhler’s music, and I doubt it’s the last we’ll hear from this singular talent.

Corkestra plays the Roundhouse Community Centre on Sunday (June 29).