The big band celebrating the work of the late Gil Evans that played Ronnie Scott's early this year may have tingled the spine, but it lacked the intuitive fluidity and sixth-sense focus it once had under Evans's direction. However, a mixed European/American big band in the same venue caught quite a few of those mysterious undercurrents, with some forceful soloing and an independent repertoire thrown in.
This ensemble, give or take a few participants, and under Quincy Jones's direction, brilliantly accompanied Miles Davis at Montreux on an Evans programme in the last year of Davis's life, which perhaps offers some clues. The regular leader is the Swiss composer and pianist George Gruntz. He has built an internationally illustrious 30-year career on a mixture of compositional creativity, unselfconscious plundering of big-band styles from Ellingtonia to free-improv and the fundraiser's energy to hire the world's leading jazz orchestra soloists. Americans Gary Valente, Ralph Peterson and Howard Johnson are in the band's current line-up, as well as regulars such as the fearsome saxophonist Sal Giorganni and young Russian trumpeter Alexander Sipiagin.
On the opening night, with the excellent Dave Green Trio opposite, the band constantly suggested the sound of other legendary big jazz outfits - Evans, the Mingus Big Band, Carla Bley's, even the free-improvising Globe Unity Orchestra. Yet the sonorities of Gruntz's arrangements, and the boldness with which he paints with other writers' colours resulted in a vivid, distinctive live performance - the medium that seems to suit the Concert Band best.
The Mingus feel surfaced in a theme for which Howard Johnson's baritone sax was the dominant voice. Sipiagin's rather whimsical Little Dancer had an astonishingly focused, subtly inflected flugelhorn solo. A typical wake-the-dead Valente trombone intro on an engagingly skewed harmony funk blaster preceded a whirlwind tenor break from Sal Giorganni. The Gruntz Concert Band is not regular Ronnie Scott's fare, but it's a very agreeable surprise.
• Until Saturday. Box office: 020-7439 0747.
