Given that he is a triple Grammy winner and hugely venerated by the rock world's cognoscenti, Bruce Hornsby's public profile is remarkably low. This rare intimate London show confirmed both his stellar talent and continued anonymity.

Hornsby briefly grabbed the limelight back in 1986 with The Way It Is, a radio-friendly soft-rock rumination on the evils of Reaganomics which topped the US chart. Yet his reputation far outstrips this one-hit wonder status, as is shown by the presence of Elton John, Eric Clapton and Sting on his new studio album, Halcyon Days.

Tonight takes the form of two sets - one promotes Halcyon Days, the other takes the form of ad hoc audience requests. Leaving behind his usual studio/live ensemble, The Range, Hornsby takes the stage armed only with a Moog organ balanced on a Steinway grand piano. It's the neoclassical keyboard equivalent of a double-necked guitar, and what ensues is a peerless display of fluid musicianship.

A balding, avuncular figure, Hornsby hops between genres like a man with chronic attention deficit disorder. Gonna Be Some Changes Made, his current single, is a wordy vignette which segues seamlessly into a Bach fugue. The punning Heir Gordon can only be described as cerebral boogie-woogie.

Like his hero, Randy Newman, Hornsby is an engaging musical geek. On Dreamland he's a minor-key Springsteen, celebrating the little man via muted melancholy rather than breast-beating histrionics. Then the jazz-flecked Song F reminds us he once held down two years in America's iconic cosmic jam band, the Grateful Dead.

Hornsby is the consummate musician's musician, and one suspects that he is prevented from knocking out further chart-friendly AOR ditties by a contrary, tightly-held sense of intuitive artistic integrity. He is happy to be a shadowy cult figure, and this is no disgrace: it's just the way it is.