Saxophonist Wayne Shorter was called Mr Weird at high school. But in a jazz career that has included almost psychic empathy within Miles Davis's best-ever quintet and the founding of legendary fusion band Weather Report, Shorter's work has been enigmatically independent, but never remote or impenetrable.

In forming an original Wayne Shorter tribute band, the young British composer/ pianist Robert Mitchell has set himself one of the toughest tasks in jazz - and done so within earshot of Shorter's 2003 world tour with his new quartet. Shorter Stories is a tailor-made British group playing a rearranged Shorter repertoire, including singer Norma Winstone and saxophonist Julian Siegel.

The band's first gig in the CBSO Centre certainly touched on Shorter's softly devious, long-lined thematic style, and his gift for conveying passion, urgency and dynamic variety without appearing to raise his voice or pulse rate. Winstone, a low-volume singer with a wide range and an instrumental improviser's reactions, was a shrewd choice - as was Siegel, who has something of the original inspiration's balance of reserve, impulsiveness and muscularity. The two often caught a Shorter band's haunting harmonies, notably on the ethereal Harlequin, and the faintly sinister chant of Children of the Night.

Mitchell uses familiar jazz materials sparingly in both his writing and his own highly virtuosic playing, and his minimalist use of percussion (Volker Strater) rather than drums abandoned the music for extended periods to a becalmed and rather puzzled air, which left out the crucial melody/rhythm interplay and one-touch shifts between calm and ferocity that are part of Shorter's magic. A freer and more spontaneously independent role for a rhythm section would have energised the imaginative arrangements.

· At the Djanogly Theatre, Nottingham (0115-846 7777), on Wednesday, then touring.