Michael Brecker/ Pat Metheny
Barbican, London ***

If Michael Brecker - one of the most influential saxophonists in recent jazz history - has a flaw, it has been that his storytelling skills are sometimes slumped on the platform while the express train of his technique roars by. But through the 90s, Brecker's improvising gradually shed grandstanding pyrotechnics and predictable repetition. Now his technique has acquired subtler colours, greater contrast and a compelling narrative strength without losing any of its legendary drive. He was demonstrating all that at the Barbican on Monday with guitarist Pat Metheny, who was back in the UK for the second time in three months.

Brecker and Metheny had put together their Special Quartet to play tunes from both their repertoires, but particularly from Brecker's most recent disc, the sweeping Time is of the Essence. Larry Goldings, a key presence on that disc, was the Special Quartet's Hammond B3 organist this week, and the dramatic and unpredictable Bill Stewart was on drums.

In a flat-out two-hour set with no interval, the contrast between Brecker's zigzagging journeys toward ecstatically wailing climaxes and Metheny's relaxed lyricism and fondness for the song-form kept thoughts of a jazz circus act at bay. The thoughtful avoidance of Hammond hot-licks from Goldings, and Bill Stewart's bumpy, fractious drumming did the rest.

They opened, as Brecker sets often do, with the fast postbop stalwart Slings and Arrows, a typical mix of swooping and percussive phrasing in which the saxophonist worked up his customary lather after a hesitant start. The insinuating, bluesy piece that followed was a gift for Metheny's lissom runs. As its momentum accelerated Brecker started toying with a guttural, four-note dissonant phrase, playing it in varying intonations and then cocking his head at it like a bird examining a meal. Brecker took the solo out with progressively softer low notes, which Stewart unsentimentally undercut, Art Blakey-style, with cantankerous tappings on the side of his snare drum.

A breezy swinger featured Goldings' absorbing blend of prickly, inquisitive phrases and Hammond-chord explosions. The many-stringed guitar Metheny uses for tone- poems and ballads backed some deliciously delicate playing from Brecker. The Metheny ballad, As I Am, revealed how eloquent Brecker has latterly become with slow music, and only a faintly self-conscious diversion into a clattery, metallic free-jazz seemed out of place. Stewart, of course, played like the blast of fresh air he always is.

***** Unmissable **** Recommended *** Enjoyable ** Mediocre * Terrible