When Richie Barshay walked on stage to play drums with Herbie Hancock at the Barbican in 2005, he looked about 12 years old, and you could almost hear the rising eyebrows. Then he played, and the tapestry of sound he created - from soft snare rattles and delicate cymbal breezes to electronic percussion - announced the arrival of a major innovator who also knew how to have fun.

Barshay is on a big UK tour, organised by the increasingly influential London-resident American bassist (and an old Barshay associate) Mike Janisch, in an Anglo-US quintet called Roundtable. They play a rhythmically fiendish repertoire which, in these early days, still obliged the musicians to stare fixedly at the scores. But as the performance developed, studiousness gave way to an exultant clamour.

The opening was folksy, with the mandolin of Petr Cancura (he also plays rugged postbop tenor sax) announcing a prancing theme that transformed into a dark sax riff over a bumpy groove. Fellow saxophonist Daniel Blake indicated that Evan Parker's seamless improv approach has made its way to the Boston scene, and the departures of these young players from conventional bop phrasing was one of the gig's fascinating features. Tellingly, Barshay even specifically announced one piece as being in a bop/swing idiom - as if in his kind of 21st-century jazz band, what many people think of as jazz is only just one option.

British vibraphonist Jim Hart unleashed several loose and lyrical solos, and bassist Janisch displayed his percussive, Mingus-like power. A theme based on a Peruvian rhythm, a twisting Indian tabla feature and the somewhat Django Bates-like melodic double-takes of Best of Intentions confirmed what unusual angles the gifted Barshay comes from. This is just the beginning for him.

· Roundtable play the Y, Leicester (0116-255 7066), on Wednesday. Then touring.