One of the best McCoy Tyner bands in at least a decade played the Barbican jazz series at the weekend, with a performance of such vivacity and crowded eventfulness as to risk sidelining next Tuesday's Michael Brecker/ Herbie Hancock show - sold out for weeks. Tyner's quartet played with an exhilarating energy unusual even for the famously high-pressure pianist, much of it fuelled by the best pairing of bass and drums he has found in years.
Saxophonist Charles Lloyd, whose band opened the evening, preferred a more meditative approach than Tyner's. Although his set lacked the main attraction's full-throttle attack, it had plenty of bright moments - particularly when Lloyd played the flute in his whisperingly talkative manner.
But all hesitation was dispatched by the opening bars of the McCoy Tyner Quartet's performance, with the group playing as if every moment was precious. Drummer Eric Harland, a stooping, dome-headed individual who plays on a modest-looking kit, maintained intense, tight time-keeping coupled with a constant spray of chattering accents, jarring tom-tom barrages and driving rimshots. It was almost all show, yet none of it was self-aggrandising or dislocated from the music's shape. Bassist Charnett Moffett - an impassioned, crouching tiger of a performer - sustained a roar of sound under the band. He delivered at least one solo of unquestioned greatness: a mix of thumbed strumming, lightning runs, drumstick use of the bow and fast harmonics.
Bobby Hutcherson, the vibraphonist, played with his familiar elegant economy through this captivating melee. Tyner, meanwhile, delivered solos with his uniquely meditative ferocity on Moment's Notice, a softly swinging version of John Coltrane's Naima, and on a fast trio piece (with Moffett and Harland marking his every twist and feint) in which his diamond-hard runs and clamorous orchestral sound were at their most imperious.
After a funkily hypnotic sermon that brought the audience to their feet, the band returned to play a coolly swinging blues for its encore - and got an ecstatic reception. This one goes straight into the list of jazz gigs of the year.
