Both the late-1950s British bop band the Jazz Couriers and the contemporary tribute group the New Couriers march a lot of notes up a hill and down again, with a sound that echoes a long-gone British jazz era in which local groups were determined to prove they could be as technically dazzling as the Americans. But the 21st-century version of the Couriers blend the competitive energy and the inventiveness of the tricksy arrangements of the original band with a calmer but still persuasive musicality.

The original Couriers were a two-tenor sax line-up mixing Tubby Hayes's mercurial bebop agility and Ronnie Scott's more refined lyricism. The latest version retains Scott's former sax partner Mornington Lockett on tenor, but adds a skilful young vibes newcomer in Jim Hart. Paul Morgan is on bass and the swinging Martin Drew on drums. Morgan, a phenomenal straightahead bassist usually diverted from the jazz circuit by a studio and session career, is one of the world's bass magicians.

The Couriers touched on plenty of Hayes originals and favourite jazz classics at this show, and even one of the late Scott's rare compositions, Some of My Best Friends Are Blues. The old swaggering roar of the two-sax ensemble is missing, but Lockett covered much of it on his own, often in seamlessly intense double-time, and vibraphonist Hart sustained a percussive directness, fleetness of phrasing and classic-swing vibe, notably on an appropriately glittering account of Stella By Starlight.

The occasional blandness of tunes originally written for a jazz world with close ties to the pre-rock dancefloor was offset by the drive of the improvising. Morgan's full-bodied bass walk was the heartbeat of the uptempo music, and his vibrato and flicked harmonics anchored the delicate ballad Serenity. Pianist Steve Melling played with economical insight on a Clark Terry swinger written for Hayes. Jazz as straightahead as it gets, but played with exuberance and heart.