For a man in his late 60s, Eddie Palmieri can still throw a remarkably fine party. Looking like a comfortably off executive dressed for the golf clubhouse, the pioneer of Latin jazz and veteran superstar of the New York salsa scene sat down at his electric piano and peered out over the crowd. "There are some great dancers in London", he noted, and then he was off. There was a relaxed precision to his sturdy, rhythmic riffs, matched by equally slick, if sometimes predictable, playing from a band that included three percussionists, trombones and flute.

This was Palmieri's trade-mark line-up when he shook up the Latin music scene back in the 1960s at the famed Palladium ballroom in New York with his band Conjunto La Perfecta, soon known simply as La Perfecta. Now, with La Perfecta II, he set out to revive the memory of that era, in a performance that included an update of early La Perfecta songs, from El Molestoso to Tirandote Flores. At the same time, this cheerfully unassuming player provided the occasional startling reminder of why he is so special. He's not just a great band leader and innovator, but a remarkable pianist, influenced as much by Thelonious Monk as by the desire to lead an exuberant dance outfit.

His aim is to create music both for dancing and for listening, as he showed once again on this opening night of the La Linea Latin music festival. He clearly enjoyed his role as band leader, urging on his singer, the adequate but somewhat un charismatic Herman Olivera, or orchestrating the interplay between percussion, brass, and solos from the inventive flute player, Karen Joseph. But none of this would have been memorable without the solos from Palmieri himself. Every 15 minutes or so, he would hijack proceedings to push the music in unexpected directions, never letting the rhythm drop as he added in a flurry of unexpected chords, rapid-fire runs and staccato flourishes worthy of the late Ruben Gonzalez. Suddenly, but all too briefly, this became far more than a salsa party.