In Joseph Heller's novel Catch-22 an eloquently amiable Texan soldier joins the group of malcontents who make up the patients on the war-time hospital ward. "The Texan turned out to be good-natured, generous and likable," Heller wrote. "In three days no one could stand him."

An echo or two of this dilemma sometimes hovers around gigs by Chick Corea, the gifted, prolific and paradoxical American pianist. Corea is a brilliant pianist with an angelic touch. The intricate, technically dazzling embroidery of his music can become an itch you can't scratch, and the tendency of his groups to point and wink knowingly at each other after solos doesn't help.

Corea played a set of tricksy, flamenco-inspired chamber jazz that occasioned these uncharitable thoughts, and then a headlong acoustic-trio second half that exhilaratingly drove them all away again. Corea's Touchstone quintet sometimes sounded like early Return to Forever playing snatches of Concierto de Aranjuez, but the Spanish rhythms were given new twists by an superb percussion section and Corea's inventiveness.

The faintly self-congratulatory air vanished, however, for the second half played by Corea's piano trio. The thunderous walk of John Patitucci's bassline and Dave Weckl's fiery cymbal-pulse drove Corea into an unstoppable stream of uptempo invention on How Deep Is the Ocean. Humpty Dumpty was a melodically devious piece with flashes of orthodox jazz phraseology and staccato unison riffs linking its elements, But Beautiful stretched lacy piano figures over Patitucci's deep, long-note counter-melodies, and Corea's Morning Sprite was a jittery piece like a drum pattern, written to spark Weckl's percussion pyrotechnics. They all stretched their vast improvising resources to the limits - and John Patitucci was completely mesmerising from the first note.

· At the Barbican on Monday. Box office: 020-7638 8891.