The Los Angeles Times once described the playing of saxophonist Michael Brecker as "stone-cold thrilling improvisations". But Brecker, always impressively skilful, has grown more emotionally engaging over the years. If he were merely a musical acrobat, he would not have risen so far above the ranks of the world's countless other virtuosos.

He is touring with a large, mixed US/British ensemble on a Contemporary Music Network project designed to frame a wide variety of familiar and unfamiliar Brecker music in a richer orchestral context, including oboe and strings. Despite the presence of fine local soloists - including reed players Stan Sulzmann and Iain Dixon, and trumpeter Chris Batchelor - it is, inevitably, Brecker's show. The American's stamina and inventiveness were more formidable than ever, and his sense of his responsibili ties and engagement with the venture seemed to be reflected in his body language - uncharacteristically animated for this normally impassive performer.

But pianist Gil Goldstein's intricately eloquent arrangements and the growing confidence of the local musicians made the music a collective success none the less. Unexpectedly, it was an audacious clarinet/trumpet duet between Dixon and Batchelor on a raunchy Brecker blues that banished an initial tentative quality in the relationship between the leader and the band. There were typical blizzards of tenor-sax sound on the Coltranesque Arc of the Pendulum and 1987's Syzygy, with Clarence Penn's drumming mirroring Brecker's own precise ferocity. Sulzmann's feathery flute contrasted engagingly with the tenor-sax storm on the Coltrane dedication D-Trane, and Brecker's appreciation of nuance and tonal variation - a growing interest of his since last year's album Nearness of You - lifted the lyrical I Can See Your Dreams.

But it was a Brecker favourite, Minsk, by the late Don Grolnick, that brought the best combination of dazzling improvisation and a memorable theme: a mix of stealthy, surreptitious melody and sporadically explosive brass exclamations. The band played a standby, Slings and Arrows, as its encore, with Brecker demonstrating - as he had many times on this long unbroken set - that there is no emotional or technical extreme that can disrupt his unerring sense of the inventively elegant resolution.

· At the Anvil, Basingstoke (01256 844244) tonight, then touring.