Ray Brown, the great double-bassist, bandleader and talent scout (he encouraged the careers of Diana Krall and Christian McBride), effortlessly embodies a largely vanished jazz urbanity. He appeared here on his 75th birthday tour; and when a musician takes the stage who lived and worked with Ella Fitzgerald, for whom Duke Ellington was a contemporary and Miles Davis a shy newcomer, the fundamental things apply.

Brown performed in his favourite format - the song-playing acoustic trio - with Monty Alexander on piano and Russell Malone on guitar. He followed an opening set by McBride's intense, multi-idiomatic contemporary quartet. As such striking contrasts of generation and method often prove, putting these two giants of the double bass in the same show was revelatory.

Brown's music loves insinuation and space, and he uses so little amplification that virtually none of the instrument's unplugged tonality is lost. McBride, a virtuoso in a more upfront and muscular manner on both double bass and bass guitar, gives his work an altogether more attacking sound and a great deal more volume. His music is a typical confection of the fusion and post-bop methods of ensembles, from early Weather Report to today's Michael Brecker band.

Camille Gainer, the remarkable hailstorm-emulating drummer in McBride's band, provided exactly the unbroken torrent of percussive sound the style demands. But it was the tiptoeing Brown who brought the house down, his meticulous musicality appealing to the several generations present. A breezy stroll through an assortment of standards confirmed the condition of the leader's elegantly unfolding counter-melodic lines and irresistibly propulsive beat (But Not For Me had a bassline like a string of subtle drumbeats). And Malone's exquisite guitar virtuosity was a blend of ecstatic vibrato and improvised melody.

Monty Alexander, a sometimes overwhelmingly ornate technician in many piano styles, turned down all that power to suit the prevailing dynamic. His account of Caravan was not only a stand-out of the night but of many nights.

McBride's set was comparable in terms of a quite different type of virtuosity, and Geoff Keezer's piano and Ron Black's quirkily diffident-sounding sax-playing gave the band plenty of width. But, as on the recent McBride album Sci-Fi, there is a hollowness in the themes that makes some powerful improvising appear cut adrift. Sci-Fi itself, the Weather Reportish funk blast that closed McBride's set, had exactly that perplexing quality.