For many years, Harry Beckett's improvising muse sounded like a perpetually happy spirit, given to outbursts of what sounded like uncontrollable laughter. The playing of the 66-year-old Barbados-born trumpeter has grown a little more cryptic and self-contained in recent years, as if sitting on the shoulder of the tune and muttering in its ear rather than dancing eagerly ahead of it. Yet, as always with Beckett, it remains a sound you can identify from a handful of notes, his methods eluding the net of any convenient model or style.

Beckett, a sideman for much of a career that began in Britain in 1954, is now on the road with an excellent band and the music from a new CD, which pairs him with the saxophonist Chris Biscoe. Immediately noticeable is the very high quality of Beckett's new compositions for this quintet. At the Vortex, his subtle developments of the traditions of hard bop, blues and Caribbean music sounded so good that the tracks could soon be contemporary standards; other band leaders are likely to be queueing up to borrow them when their virtues sink in.

The group has real presence: Biscoe's more abrasive and angular approach contrasts with Beckett's mellow linearity; there's a central role for the eloquent, ringing-harmonics electric bass of Fred Thelonious Baker, coupled with the loose energy of Tony Marsh's drumming. For the Vortex gig, Steve Lodder was guesting on piano, and his alertness and ability to spontaneously echo and transform the ongoing sounds around him added to the group's powerful identity.

Beckett's own playing, though it tends to a kind of dynamic monotone, and regularly alternates between short, ruminative phrases and sudden impulsive dashes, was quirkily hypnotic throughout. So was the contrast with the compositions, the latter seeming to celebrate the more expansive aspect of Beckett the soloist of earlier years.

A couple of boppish swingers mingling sinewy melodies with tantalising hanging resolutions were followed by the swirling cadences of a slow, waltzy theme. The latter not only tempted out Lodder's most elegant Keith Jarrettisms, but encouraged a progressively more relaxed and warmly thoughtful Beckett, now on flugelhorn. It also brought a superb solo from Biscoe on soprano sax, who played as if Lodder's provocative accompaniment and his own train of thought were feeding off each other. A jubilant fast blues then confirmed how intelligently this group grasps a collective spirit.