Though still in his mid-30s, trumpet player Gerard Presencer has been a fixture of British jazz for nearly two decades. He made a crucial contribution to US3's Cantaloop, plays regularly with Ronnie Scott's house band and has been featured in many prestigious projects, including Harvey Brough's Requiem in Blue and the recent tour by Mike Gibbs. He is an important voice within music education, too, as head of jazz at the Royal Academy of Music, guiding gifted young players into the realities of the scene.

Now he is grabbing the limelight for himself: Into the Blue is a bid to make music that is both credible and commercially viable. Tonight's gig is the band's first, but you would hardly know it; the only signs of nervousness are in Presencer's announcements. When he shyly dedicates Stevie Wonder's Superwoman to his wife, Siobhan, everyone murmurs, "Ahh."

Into the Blue, with a lineup of bass, drums and two keyboards, have a sound that evokes both contemporary chillout (Zero 7, Beauty Room, Cinematic Orchestra) and 1970s fusion. Mellow tunes such as Sunny Day hover dangerously close to smooth jazz, but others - Weirdo, Now You're Gone - give a more robust account of Presencer's talents as bandleader and soloist. A surprise element in Now You're Gone is the singing of superb drummer Winston Clifford, whose sensitive soul-jazz vocals are reminiscent of George Duke's.

The leader's flugel-playing is consistently good, and he makes clever use of an electronic box that adds harmonies, digital delays and other effects without obscuring his warm tone. For the moment, what this band needs is plenty of touring, and an album that focuses Presencer's concept into a product that may prove to have both credibility and wide appeal.