Gary Husband had the misfortune to play the Vortex the night after one of its most high-profile events of the year: the gig by guitarist Wolfgang Muthspiel with Marc Johnson and Brian Blade. As a result, the gifted Yorkshire-born pianist and drummer found himself playing to an almost empty house.
Husband's name isn't often included in the A-list of local jazz; and yet almost every one of his rare shows confirms that he deserves a place at the top of that league. With his regular trio of Mick Hutton (bass) and Gene Calderazzo (drums), Husband started this show as if he were playing encores to cheering hordes. Husband plays drums as well as he plays piano, and he plays both brilliantly. He has the ferocity and drama of a rock musician, even though much of his repertoire centres on jazz standards. For his trio gigs, he concentrates on piano, though a drummer's intuition appears everywhere in his timing and rhythm. Often he builds pieces out of the intermingled sounds of the acoustic instrument, an electric keyboard and a synthesiser. Ideas tumble from him, and he rarely repeats himself except for effect.
This performance took in plenty of standard jazz material, but Husband began with a typical ski-run of an original. He mixed springy, straightahead jazz swing with abrupt tempo changes, phrase-swapping with one hand on the piano and the other on the synthesiser, creating electronic textures reminiscent of Joe Zawinul.
As this tumult died down, Hutton ushered in the melody of The Way You Look Tonight on the bass, although Calderazzo and Husband made it plain they wouldn't be treating that filmy ballad with the usual delicacy. Calderazzo unleashed cymbal crashes behind the yearning bassline, and Husband soon hurtled into a rocking chordal solo.
Hutton played a solo of nimble high-register figures and humming low sounds before I Concentrate on You and Take Five emerged: the first theme hidden in chords after a dark, foreboding synthesiser intro, the second barely recognisable in warped harmonies and electric textures but turning into a fast, post-Coltrane acoustic piano barrage.
The leader's subtle reflectiveness was particularly piquant in a delicious rumination on If I Should Lose You. Husband is the kind of jazz musician whose work admirers will assiduously collect in years to come, but he deserves a lot more than that now.
At the Albert Inn, Bristol, tomorrow. Box office: 0117-966 1968.
