It was only eighteen months ago that Gwyneth Herbert dropped her demo off at the PizzaExpress Jazz Club in Soho. Now Universal Records are posting cannily glamorous images of their new Jazz Singing Sensation all over the place.
Herbert hinted last year that her persuasiveness at low volumes was as subtle as Diana Krall's, that she had soaring full-on power in reserve, and that her songwriting partnership with guitarist Will Rutter might make her more than just a classy covers-singer. This week, she mingles powerful, hard-rocking music such as Portishead's Glory Box (her upcoming first single, fiercely intensified at Ronnie Scott's by John Parricelli's scalding guitar) with understated contrasts such as an almost whispered version of The Very Thought of You, eloquently expanded on by pianist Tom Cawley's bluesy phrasing and ambiguously shaded chords. Herbert wound up with Fever, typically redesigned to veer between a murmur and lightning strikes of raw power.
Herbert's programme is, of course, a nightclub audience's perfect menu. Trumpeter Jeremy Pelt's performance seemed almost severe by contrast, an exposition of premier league contemporary postbop that set the jazzers hissing "Ssssh!" at the uninitiated at the back. Pelt is a superb trumpeter, out of the stable dominated by thoroughbreds Miles Davis and Art Farmer in their late-1950s incarnations, but he adapts the method to more ambiguous, extended pieces in which the grooves and intensity shift constantly. In a long opener, Pelt began with precisely weighted short phrases shot through with explosive ascents over EJ Strickland's muscular, bumpy drumming; he touched on quotes from standards and followed his superb pianist Xavier Davis into McCoy Tyner-like Latin diversions. Then came a muted-trumpet ballad played almost acoustically while wandering the stage, and a return to headlong double-time, staccato mid-register runs illuminated by whooping high figures. This is clearly the real Pelt (he's often required simply to be a sprinting hard-bopper in other people's bands), an expert and deep-rooted jazz lover with a profound grasp of the real deal.
· Until Saturday. Box office: 020-7439 0747.
