This year, on a visit to Ronnie Scott's, the great Cuban pianist and bandleader Chucho Valdés seemed too big for the room. He rocketed through jazz piano history, with classical music and Duke Ellington flicks and hints, and a balance of formidable technique and instant recall for tunes that rivalled that of Sonny Rollins. Valdés hasn't called his band the Afro-Cuban Messengers for nothing: it joins much of the hard-boppish crispness and percussive punch of Art Blakey's legendary Jazz Messengers to the traditional rhythms and drum textures of Cuban dance music. The leader's own playing is titanic, from his stirring chordwork behind his already inflamed soloists, to his improvisations of blazing trills and cascading runs. Zawinul's Mambo ducks in and out of references to Joe Zawinul's Birdland; Valdés's tribute to New Orleans mixes coolly grooving jazz, hustling fast themes and a breezy New Orleans swing section; trumpeter Reynaldo Melián Alvarez and tenor saxophonist Carlos Miyares Hernandez can turn up the heat or turn down the lights with equal ease. It's pretty flamboyant, but has about it the thrill of a live show.