Pianist Peter Martin and bassist Christian McBride have been playing jazz together since they were teenagers. So when they take the stage Saturday evening at the Sheldon Concert Hall, expect a concert that's as intimate as it is entertaining.

It's the latest presentation in the "Peter Martin Music" series, which features the St. Louis-based Martin in the company of musical acquaintances. The pianist is best known for his work with singer Dianne Reeves, who was his debut guest in February. The concert with McBride will be the fourth in the series, which Martin says is attracting listeners beyond the usual jazz crowd.

"That was definitely a goal of mine," said the successful band leader, who has also served as sideman to top artists including saxophonist Joshua Redman. "And I think the audience is enjoying it."

The piano-bass duo is one of the more challenging configurations in jazz, and the prospect of hearing Martin and McBride interact is intriguing.

McBride, 38, is considered one of the foremost jazz artists to emerge in recent years. Early in his career, his skills as a bassist were showcased on such albums as trumpeter Wallace Roney's "Obsession" (1991) and Redman's "MoodSwing" (1994).

"He really had all his stuff together," Martin said of McBride. "I don't think there's been any jazz musician of our generation who has arrived on the New York scene with the kind of buzz that Christian had. Everybody was talking about him. I felt really privileged that I knew him already."

It wasn't long before McBride was making albums under his own name, including "Gettin' to It" (1995), "Number Two Express" (1996) and "A Family Affair" (1998). But McBride was arguably heard to best effect on the collaborative disc "Parker's Mood" (1995), on which the bassist, trumpeter Roy Hargrove and pianist Stephen Scott paid tribute to the music of bebop legend Charlie Parker.

Since then, McBride has proved to be a master of a variety of jazz idioms, from fusion to post-bop. Last year's "Kind of Brown" was as good an acoustic jazz album as any released in the past decade. It features McBride's band, Inside Straight, in which Martin has occasionally performed on the road.

But the stripped-down duo setting should be just as amenable to the rapport between Martin and McBride as it was between Martin and Reeves.

"Christian's one of the only other people I know, that we can easily pull off an interesting show with just two musicians on stage," Martin said.