Jazz-funk sax playing can have an aspect of sound and fury signifying sweet FA. Since the groove is everything in that idiom, horn players often reduce their contribution to punching home the accents. And there's a widely-shared repertoire of low-note honks, squalling high dissonances and an automatic-fire of staccato repeated notes to make sure nobody misses it.

Nelson Rangell, the Denver-born multi-instrumentalist, sails close to these treacherous waters but is saved by a superb technique that gives every sound an extra resonance and grace. He has a broad, soulful tone on both alto and tenor (the sensuous sound of David Sanborn and Ronnie Laws are audible in Rangell's playing), and a luxuriously rounded sound on flute, with none of the flimsiness the instrument often exhibits in jazz settings.

For his London stopover, Rangell had regular accompanists Phil Mulford (bass guitar) and Chris Dagley (drums), with local pianist Steve Hamilton fitting in seamlessly. He delivered a roaring alto solo over a fast groove on Far Away Days, from his new CD, to kick off, following with a grittily tender tenor-sax soliloquy on a piece with strong echoes of Ronnie Laws's Always There. Over a Latin-tinged and melodically-devious Chuck Loeb tune called Starstream, Rangell then displayed the rich tone and affecting delicate quiver he adopts on flute, and got into a vigorously riffing conversation with Dagley's drums on its finale.

I Will, I Do began with a poetic slow electric bass over ture by Mulford, but interesting rhapsodies don't generally survive for long in this style of music before the storm troopers pitch in, and it soon became a wailing alto-sax outing. The same happened to a delectable piccolo melody called The Magician (Rangell said he found the sheet music for it on the floor of a gig and has never managed to locate the composer), its swirling reverie eventually turning into an uptempo blast like an old Chick Corea tune.

To celebrate the season, Rangell eventually found his way into Let It Snow, a choice guaranteed to test the sentimentality defences of hardcore jazz fans to the limit.