When a jazz-club audience forget to clap the solos because they are busy talking, you know there is something missing in the music. When they forget to clap the solos, but are not making a sound, you know it means the opposite. You would often see a crowd in this kind of trance when hypnotic pianist Bill Evans was playing, and it happened tonight at the Vortex for Uri Caine, the hugely inventive American jazz pianist, and his trio of Drew Gress (bass) and Ben Perowski (drums).

Caine phrases and attacks the music in a fascinating way. He loves the musical past - Mahler and Bach, alongside Thelonious Monk and Miles Davis - but never sounds anything less than a restlessly modern performer. And though he inhabits an international jazz world that is richer in fine acoustic piano improvisers than it has been for years, Caine can, in his trio incarnation, be a more satisfying and unmannered conduit between swing, groove, fusion and free-impro than anyone else.

With Caine's opening chords, memories of Bill Evans live flooded back - Caine's approach, though flintier, showed the same ambiguity and depth, constantly promising surprise. Between Evans-like arpeggios and harmonic departures careering off at tangents, Gress's bass considered every turn of Caine's phrasing.

Caine hid Monk's Round Midnight for a long time, concentrating on the harmonies rather than the tune. As the tempo picked up, he briefly reshaped the piece as Horace Silver-like soul-jazz, and it resolved in rushes of notes and wistful whispers from the piano. The trio's work grew increasingly organic, with an interplay of slow, unfolding melodies, and the audience fell silent. A bumpy Monk theme turned gradually into Green Dolphin Street, and Davis's famous signature, The Theme, was played as staccato chords over fearsomely intricate funk.

You don't hear much mention of progressive music these days, but this was a fitting occasion if ever there was one.

· Uri Caine's Trio play the Wardrobe, Leeds (0113-274 2486), tonight, then tour to Nottingham, Kendal and Birmingham.