When people asked Miles Davis where jazz was headed, he said they should go and hear his alto player. That was Kenny Garrett, who was with him from 1986 until Davis's death in 1991. Garrett is at the Dean Street Pizza Express until Sunday with his favourite kind of muscular quartet, playing in a manner that not only gratifies admirers of the expository, dissonant style of the later John Coltrane, but also has enough passion to surprise even the unconverted. In the conservative 90s it was a brave stance that paid off, and it still does.

Garrett has not substantially reshaped the jazz language, being deeply immersed in the transfer of Coltrane's approach to the alto sax. But if that's the last big thing in jazz rather than the next big thing, he continues to reach all kinds of audiences with a predominantly atonal and abstract angle on improvising. This week he is proving that this success comes partly from his steely determination and focus, which cut into the attention of the most distracted audience, and partly from his formidable technique and the selection of consistently thrilling partners. With drummer Marcus Baylor (a young man with much of Elvin Jones's deep, reverberating tom-tom and bass drum sound), plus pianist Carlos McKinney's ability to draw listeners into the subtle implications of repeated rhythmic patterns, and Nat Reeves's softly lyrical bass, Garrett is in scorching form.

He tests the resolve of his audience with a 10-minute howl of free-blasting alto at the outset, reflects on Coltrane's tender side with an atmospheric mid-tempo lament, delivers the classic Giant Steps in a whooping manner that echoes Ornette Coleman as much as Trane, and then shows how amenable he can be with a lighter country-funk theme that reflects the depth of his improvising vocabulary as well as his tonal range on the soprano. Garrett may not yet fully live up to Davis's endorsement, but he has the potential.