Throughout the noughties, the startling, innovative sounds of US pianist Craig Taborn have consistently risen above the contemporary-jazz melee. Taborn's reputation packed the Vortex, the anticipation heightened by the chance to hear such a textures-and-electronics specialist perform with a traditional bass and drum accompaniment.

The long opening set was a hair-raising masterpiece of pacing and drama that never sounded anything less than spontaneous. Taborn started with a rocking left-hand chord, eventually joined by a brusque, stabbing melody, which steadily gathered a roar of rolling chords. Then came a clipped treble ostinato that released a torrent of fast free-jazz, with a hint of Thelonious Monk's Rhythm-A-Ning. Piano and bass then gave way to drummer Gerard Cleaver, building a deceptively idling passage of slow rumbles and offhand snare patterns into an onslaught of tattoos and pounding.

Taborn re-emerged with a mutated salsa-piano clamour and a series of edgy vamps that smoothed out into something close to straightahead swing. All this tumbling variation set the audience up for a contrasting long episode in which almost nothing happened – with the pianist stooping under the lid of his instrument to stroke eerie sounds from the strings within, while bassist Thomas Morgan performed softly probing variations. Apart from a kicked-over bottle, a mobile ringtone, and one non-believer at the back who burst into hysterical laughter and had to escape to the loo, the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd barely breathed a sound.

Release came in the form of the strutting finale, a rhythmically dazzling uptempo piece with a melody that had more squirming, twisting tentacles than an octopus.

On Radio 3 on 8 February.