The British jazz world is a small one, and most of its faces are familiar. That's why the influence of Clifford Jarvis, the Hackney-resident American drummer and teacher who died last week aged 58, is so fascinating. The company he kept here was not part of the local jazz mainstream, and it showed at this memorial and fundraising gig at the Spitz.

Jarvis, who played with some of the most formidable partners in jazz, including John Coltrane, Archie Shepp and Sun Ra, was a maverick, a master drummer who was so resolutely his own man that he didn't fit easily into the sometimes cosy village life of the British jazz circuit.

His forceful influence as a player and a teacher came from long and varied experience in the US, from bebop with Chet Baker to the avant garde. He was also influenced, politically and musically, by his father Malcolm Jarvis, who was imprisoned for political activity in the 60s, along the walkway from his friend Malcolm X.

This show brought together local musicians from the London jazz and reggae scenes in a show that included poetry and reminiscence. The centrepiece was a world premiere for a mini-concerto written by Jarvis's father in his prison years, called The Bastille Concerto. Loz Speyer, the excellent young London trumpeter, transcribed the piece from a piano chart at the drop of a hat this week, and arranged it via a single rehearsal for a fine band that included cello and violin.

The coherence of the group was astonishing in the circumstances. It was galvanised by Jarvis student Caroline Taylor's alert, intelligent drumming and given a sharp postboppish edge by alto saxophonist Jason Yarde. A slippery high-register delicacy was provided by tenorist Brian Iddenden.

Some of the scoring was reminiscent of the mix of European folk and cabaret forms with 60s experimentalism that characterised Carla Bley's and Charlie Haden's Liberation Music Orchestra. Some of it opened as flouncy waltz-time disappearing into explosive bebop flurries. Some of it was like an amiable Ellingtonesque march, and some of it quivered with the fierce harmonies of Coltrane's music for Ascension.

The balance of soloing and ensemble playing might be evened out on subsequent shows, but we're likely to hear from this little gem again.