James Carter, the 31-year-old Detroit saxophonist, has been building a reputation for awesome originality since he emerged in the early 90s, and though he isn't as big a star as his contemporary Joshua Redman, he deserves to be. Carter's performances are compelling, earthy, ferocious and risky. Considering how much he relies on variations on the traditions, that is an indication of how powerful an imagination and technique he has.

He's at his best when his rugged mix of free-sax blasting, fundamentalist funk and talkative lyricism is pushed by performers as dominant as him. At this gig he was in about the best setting he could have found: Kelvyn Bell joined him on guitar, Jamaaladeen Tacuma on bass and Calvin Weston on drums.

The most magnetic feature of the fluid, intense set was the absence of self-conscious deliberation, as the ingredients of 20th-century black American music were hurled together and torn apart. Bell played a delicate Broadway guitar ballad, turned it into a funky rhythm-shuffle, then a passage of free-guitar pushed it aside. James Carter arrived in this at his most extreme then eased into a breezy funk. Switching from alto to tenor, Carter played Good Morning Heartache beautifully, with voluptuous smears over lazy swing, then reprofiled it as a Latin dance groove. It was like listening to a jazz history lesson - but not recollected in tranquillity, rather the opposite.