Gillespiana is an expert, occasionally assembled 19-piece jazz orchestra that plays blistering 1940s Dizzy Gillespie arrangements in pubs that barely have room for the band in the bar, let alone on the bandstand.

Led by the dynamic alto saxophonist Pete Long and featuring a legion of nonchalant studio hypertechnicians most British jazz fans have hardly heard of, it is a legacy band with a difference. It plays with an explosive relish that would blow the audience out of the doors if the doors could be located in the crush. Gillespie's late-1940s big band may have been the first full-scale, modern-jazz, bebop orchestra, but it was anything but cerebral in its bravura, punchy swing and the breathtaking deviousness of its arrangements, and Long's replica catches just that feeling.

"Blues in B flat," shouted Long (who bawls at his musicians like a football coach) to his still-settling partners at the outset, and pianist Simon Wallace eased them into a loose swinger that turned into Tad Dameron's Cool Breeze. Young trumpeter Mark Armstrong, the solo star of the outfit, played the first of many scorching trumpet breaks on this opener, though fellow trumpeter Steve Fishwick and tenor saxophonist Pete Wareham sometimes caught the subtler bop-era implications more shrewdly with a less bravura approach.

Fishwick delivered a succinctly telling solo on Gillespie's Groovin' High, and on St Louis Blues the band negotiated the skid from soaring impressionism to deft groove right on the nail.

Long's own alto playing was a considerable strength, saxophonist Alex Garnett was throatily eloquent, and some sharply hip scat-singing and gibberish-vocalese came from alto saxophonist Colin Skinner and guest veteran Frank Holder. Long's smeared, bluesy notes and hot sound raised the temperature on the Latin version of Woody 'n' You, and the audience did its best at call-and-response on Gillespie's Oop Bop Sh'Bam, with the leader amiably shouting "rubbish" at the punters at intervals. It was that kind of night.