Lalo Schifrin and the BBC Big Band

Sadlers Wells, London ****

The world will always associate Lalo Schifrin with the theme from Mission: Impossible (and possibly the themes from Bullitt and Dirty Harry too), but his movie and TV work is merely the most visible of Lalo's wide-ranging talents.

He came to Paris from his native Buenos Aires in the 1950s, where he studied with Olivier Messiaen while working up his credentials as jazz pianist, arranger and composer. He has written large-scale pieces for symphony orchestra, but he is also a gifted jazz composer. This performance found Schifrin getting the more popular stuff out of the way in the first half, before unleashing the British premiere of his Latin Jazz Suite in part two.

Schifrin is a stooping figure with an air of old-world courtliness, though with his bow tie and tails and thick mane of black hair, there's just a hint of the Bela Lugosi about him. He struck up the band with George Gershwin's Strike Up The Band, then whizzed through Charlie Parker's Chi Chi before leading the ensemble into his own theme from The Cincinnati Kid.

Mission: Impossible appeared just before the intermission, and Schifrin forced the pace at the piano, launching into the rumbling riff at breakneck speed.

Booted along by guest drummer Ignacio Berroa, the ensemble kept the piece tight and ominous, playing up its artful cross-rhythms to emphasise its South American roots.

For his Latin Jazz Suite, Schifrin had brought along a couple of crack soloists: trumpeter Jon Faddis and saxophonist David Sanchez. To their credit, the BBC band were by no means abashed to be in this illustrious company, and their playing throughout was crisp and vibrant, with every cunning rhythmic deviation fearlessly negotiated.

The Suite consists of six separate pieces, loosely pegged together by their shared rhythmic and tonal palettes. The Cuban beat and zinging syncopations of Montuno soon had both soloists ablaze, while Martinique evoked the vivid Caribbean colours that its title would suggest. Manaos exhibited a darker, more Brazilian feel, with Berroa ladling on the subtleties while holding down a Godzilla-sized beat.

Schifrin's own crabwise piano phrasing seized centre stage in Ritual, while the band's trumpets and trombones raged behind him. Extra treats lay in store for the en cores. Schifrin led off with a few bars of Thelonious Monk's Misterioso before veering into the theme from Blue Monk. As the piece opened out, Faddis and Sanchez swapped interludes of powerful, inventive solo playing.

Then Schifrin helped himself to a lengthy session at the keyboard, while Faddis cued the band in and out around him. This was music of wit and style. More!