The more casually engaged of British music lovers might be forgiven for thinking that the UK touring circuit doesn't need another straightahead, horns-and-rhythm-section jazz band. But listening beyond the point where genre has been defined almost invariably reveals something deeper.

The former Loose Tubes and Nucleus saxophonist Tim Whitehead, for instance, is a far quirkier and more imaginative player than the rituals of postbop require. And the self-taught, Perugia-born pianist Giovanni Mirabassi - paired up with Whitehead for this short tour - is a contemporary jazz pianist of a particular, rhapsodically southern-European character, as romantically eloquent in a luxurious, cafe-waltz manner as his piano compatriot Enrico Pieranunzi. Whitehead and Mirabassi make a compelling contrast, and the local rhythm section of Oli Hayhurst (bass) and Milo Fell (drums) enhances it.

At the Festival Hall's bar last week, the quartet ran through a mix of originals by the leaders and some inventive makeovers. Whitehead loves song themes (reworking classic pop is a favourite pursuit of his), so it wasn't far into his own structurally jumpy, Latin-sprung original New Day when he dropped in an elegant quote from It Might as Well Be Spring, and his dry, hollow-toned post-boppish persona was overtaken by a more relaxed, almost Stan Getz-esque, rolling lyricism.

A Mirabassi waltz emerged, sounding like a Nino Rota movie theme, and both he and Whitehead used its wide open spaces to spin fresh whimsical melody - the saxophonist sometimes recolouring a sharply struck phrase with an identical successor of different tones and articulation. Bassist Hayhurst opened a rearrangement of West Side Story's Somewhere with a symmetry and poise mirrored by Mirabassi, the pianist making his instrument sound plastic and delicately fluid in the manner of Bill Evans. Polished straightahead jazz, but with some attractive bends left in it.

· At St Cyprian's Church, London NW1, tomorrow. Box office: 020-7724 2389. Then touring.