A famous old jazz trumpeter once put one of his horns up for sale, with an ad announcing that the instrument was in generally good condition, and "completely unused in the upper register". If 72-year-old Maynard Ferguson were to do the same, he could almost claim the opposite.

Ferguson has been making trumpet sounds apparently directed at an audience of bats since the early 50s, when his prowess made him a special-effects man for the eclectic Stan Kenton band of that time. He is in London this week with his Big Bop Nouveau Band, the young ensemble he has been fronting through the past decade.

It's brash, fast, slickly-arranged big band music (rather reminiscent of the late Buddy Rich's ensemble) that hits the accents with the deft conviction now displayed by expert college jazz orchestras all over the States. (Ferguson even name-checked everybody's university, as if to ram the point home.) Most of the longer solos are taken by an efficient crop of young postbop soloists, and Ferguson (a colourful figure of formidable girth who came on wearing a jacket big enough to conceal most of the band) makes brief, squalling interjections with an astonishing degree of his old power.

Apart from his now sporadically remarkable acrobatics, the strengths of the group are some really crackling arrangements, which squeeze more out of the familiar Basie-like materials of exclamatory riffs, falling brass cadences, and breezily conversational counter-melody than most young bands in the idiom manage, and a vigorous rhythm section pivoting on the imaginative Brian Wolf on drums. Just Friends swung with a mellow ease, Girl From Ipanema was rather imprudently funky (but it made a change), and the leader's mix of Indian music and jazz was an intriguing curiosity. Subtle it ain't, but for big-band fans, it pushes all the buttons.

At Ronnie Scott's, London WC2 (020-7439 0747), till Saturday, opposite the Ronnie Scott Legacy quartet.