Patrick Cornelius, the fast-rising American postbop alto saxophonist, told the Vortex audience the group had had trouble naming one of their pieces. "We kept inventing more and more ridiculous titles for it while we were on the road," Cornelius confided. "In the end, we settled on the most ridiculous one we could think of." The title turned out to be The Ballad of Stony Gray, which doesn't seem as ridiculous as all that. But if the studious Cornelius appears to keep his sense of the ridiculous well tethered, the sometimes meticulous air of the Transatlantic Collective's music is dispelled by the energetic intelligence of their material and players.

The multinational group features a couple of Cornelius's Manhattan School of Music alumni in Europeans Dan Tepfer (piano) and Paul Wiltgen (drums), young expat American bassist Michael Janisch, and UK trumpeter Quentin Collins. That fine local guitarist Phil Robson, who has been on a creative roll through 2007, also joined in for part of the show.

Plenty of contemporary-jazz buttons are pushed, from the linear, rhythmically layered style of New Yorker David Binney (with whom Wiltgen has worked), to a 21st-century version of cool school bop, and a Wayne Shorterish blend of enigmatically floating lyricism over driving drumming. Cornelius's agile horn-harmony parts and Collins' bright-toned trumpeting periodically warmed the music. Wiltgen's tricky, time-shifting arrangement of Cole Porter's It's All Right With Me built dramatically to a drum-thrash, and pianist Tepfer explored plaintive harmonies within his delicate originals. Cornelius's Charlie Parker allegiances showed on the uptempo Minor Steps, and Travelling Song was folksy. The show was recorded as the Collective's next album release - keep an eye, and ear, out for it.