This year's news about the tough-minded and original British saxophonist/composer Julian Arguelles seemed to be the extension of his writing skills into jazz/classical crossovers. He released an album in March on which elegiacally English compositions were performed by a jazz band and classical strings. But now he has stuck his neck out further - touring with a bare-bones sax-led trio, dependent on his resources as an improviser, featuring two of the biggest names in American sharp-end contemporary jazz, bassist Michael Formanek and drummer Tom Rainey.

This is an uncompromising situation, but in Formanek and Rainey Arguelles could hardly have found more responsive partners. More like a Vortex gig than one at PizzaExpress, the show foregrounded the freedom of movement between familiar jazz devices and pulseless or themeless investigation and a startled audience was won over by the trio's obvious appetite for risk.

A fast, somewhat Ornette Coleman-like postbop wriggler, Cookiegate, established Arguelles' relish for the task, constantly raising the bar for new leaps into unknown melody, while the bell-toned, Charlie Haden-like Formanek rumbled beneath and Rainey applied his inimitable, arrhythmic monologue of badgering rimshots and clashing cymbals.

A more rhapsodic Ornette atmosphere surfaced in the smeary sounds and hovering split-notes of Bachelor Pad, the leader's solo developing through bold modulations and tone changes. Another almost-groover confirmed how well Arguelles can put long, logical lines together, and the engaging repeated tenor-riff of Which Way Out emerged from a wispy Hermeto Pascoal-like rumination played by Arguelles on two wooden flutes at once. Brave, muscle-stretching music, sprung from distinctive composing.