Jason Moran, the 35-year-old virtuoso jazz pianist and composer from Houston, often takes his listeners on a century-spanning slideshow of African-American and European-classical music – but he splices the elements with such audacity, conviction and skill that awed audiences never feel under instruction. Moran and his long-running Bandwagon trio played one night at Ronnie Scott's with new material as well as music from their much-praised current album, Ten.

Moran first grew a blossoming piano trill and then an uncompromising surge of blistering improv out of the opening spoken-word soundtrack, and Tarus Mateen (on bass guitar) and drummer Nasheet Waits joined him in quickly driving it toward a collective roar. Gospel phrasing began surfacing after the dust settled, then a rocking chord vamp over Waits's rumbling tom-tom patterns introduced Blessing the Boats, a deft balance of hinted pop hooks written by Moran's classical-soprano wife Alicia Hall Moran. As he was to do throughout the show, the pianist oscillated between the grand piano and Fender Rhodes, mostly playing the latter sparingly for soul, funk and blues-infusing colouration.

With the instinct for the unexpected that has marked him out since the 90s, Moran then played the Prince-composed 80s pop hit Ice Cream Castles, whistled along with it, added the Fender's punchy chording, and segued it into his choppy score for a Robert Kennedy documentary, RFK in the Land of Apartheid. Glimpses of Thelonious Monk's stuttery classics, Cuban dance-band clamours and dancing funk fused in astonishing conversations, with Moran sparking glittering runs off darting chord patterns, Mateen freely moving his fast basslines inside and outside the songs, and Waits building walls of sound that still glinted with detail. It's one of the world's great jazz groups.