This has been the centenary year of the birth of Gil Evans, the composing genius and orchestral alter ego to Miles Davis. The news triggered tribute projects and some high-profile gigs in the US. In the UK, there was a BBC radio gig on Evans's birthday, a London jazz festival show – and a handful of rare performances by the composer Mike Gibbs, one of the world's most creative inheritors of Evans's methods. This week, Gibbs and a handpicked big band hit the Vortex to preview their forthcoming album of Evans arrangements, Gibbs originals and pieces by Carla Bley, Ornette Coleman and Thelonious Monk.

Evans's music depends on a delicate balance of spontaneous interpretation and tightly stacked harmonies, so it's hard for an impromptu group to just fall into the required mix of improv relaxation and punctilious attention. For a while, therefore, it was Gibbs's regular pianist Hans Koller – who knows the material intimately – who drifted most comfortably between support for the band and roving solos, until the other soloists found their feet. Evans's version of Bilbao Song glimmered like a sunrise out of long tuba tones and rising muted-trumpet chords, with Michael Janisch's rich bass carrying the tune. Saxophonist Finn Peters' swerving alto break on St Louis Blues was coaxed and badgered by fast-changing ensemble rejoinders, and the dissonant piano intro of Evans's sultry masterpiece Las Vegas Tango tingled the spine as it always can, even if the Gibbs version feels a shade quick.

Inhibitions had vanished by the second half, in which Gibbs's chord-manoeuvering Tennis Anyone? received a bluesy edge from Koller and some graceful pirouettes from trumpeter Percy Pursglove, and the bandleader confirmed just what an imaginative interpreter of Monk he is. But a dazzlingly riff-packed and country-flavoured account of Coleman's Ramblin' was the show's highlight, with Peters soulfully wailing in the high register, and the band punching home the hooks.