Since the 1940s jazz has tended to float, not stomp. With the bebop drummers' fluttering cymbal beats and their scattering of accents like seeds on a wind, the flow of jazz time became more fluid. That climatic shift left behind the Hot Club of France, Django Reinhardt's band of the 1930s and 1940s. But another gifted French Gypsy guitarist, the 36- year-old Bireli Lagrene, is reviving the sound.
Now the chunky, on- the-beat rhythms that accompanied Reinhardt's playing sound quaint, and the chirpy four-square tempos that were such a trademark of the style can blend the tunes into each other. The secret of making this music work for a modern audience lies in the audacity of the improvising. In that respect the two principal soloists - Lagrene and Romanian violinist Florin Niculescu, taking the Stéphane Grappelli role - provided plenty of fireworks, which became more incandescent as the show developed.
The two opening tunes were standard Hot Club mid-tempo canters, with the three acoustic guitarists (Lagrene was flanked by Hono Winterstein and Thomas Butronc) advancing in jaunty formation. But there were already hints in Niculescu's ascents to birdsong high notes and occasional wild flurries at angles to the harmony that this music wouldn't be simply a transcription from the old discs. A more sensuous third piece brought a phenomenal stream of lightly struck double-time runs from Lagrene, and a couple of almost abstract guitar/violin dialogues as introductions to the inevitable swing hinted that Lagrene and Niculescu were capable of drifting where the fancy took them.
As the collective temperature of the ensemble increased, the ideas of the two front players ventured closer to the edge. On How High the Moon, Lagrene - a guitarist of speed and flexibility - began to improvise in a kind of dynamic shorthand, as if he were sounding the accents of phrases and allowing the threads between to become diaphanous. A driving blues made him clangier and more metallic, swapping phrases with Niculescu with an effervescence that reduced them both to laughter.
· Until Friday. Box office: 020-7439 8722.
