Seeing the world's most accomplished Cuban musicians often involves a trip to your nearest classical concert hall, where the stewards pace the aisle with whips in case anyone risks a dance. It is refreshing then to sample the visceral charms of violinist Omar Puente, a bonafide virtuoso who can boast links to such legends as Ruben Gonzales - (the two have performed together) - but who is still very much a doyen of the club circuit.

Puente will be familiar to jazz fans because of his work with award-winning saxophonist Denys Baptiste. He injects more than a little of that musician's cutting-edge sensibility into his own project, the 10-piece band Raices Cubanas. Containing musicians from the National Symphony Orchestra of Cuba, they have been dubbed the country's nueva generación.

In Sheffield, the band began their set while the clientele were still dining, but they soon made it clear this was no side-show. A deafening five-minute conga solo led into a smouldering piano and bass groove, spookily redolent of the opening to Coltrane's A Love Supreme. Puente's opening violin salvo also seemed carved from the basic vocabulary of be-bop, containing flurries of notes arranged into great, scrambling arpeggios. But this was simply the overture; over the next few minutes Puente unleashed a barrage, attacking his instrument as if possessed by evil spirits.

The band eventually fell into a recognisably Latin groove, but Puente continued to dazzle, spinning gypsy charm, classical alacrity and avant-garde flourishes into the fabric of every solo. With subtle cross-rhythms undulating beneath, it wasn't long before the club was alive with rotating hips and amorous embraces. Puente's musicians responded appropriately, and if the rest of the gig was more a groove-led party than a musical tour de force, the thunder of the opening 20 minutes continued to resonate.