For this one-off performance in Sheffield, Stan Tracey was joined by son Clarke on drums, Andy Cleyndert on bass and special guest Nigel Hitchcock, a young British tenor player with a bottomless barrel of melodic inspiration.

They began with a frisky reading of Bright Mississippi, an obvious starting point given Tracey's devotion - and massive stylistic debt - to the tune's composer Thelonious Monk. From there they proceeded to the first of a series of hard-driving originals, Tracey unfolding dramatic vistas with the briefest of strokes and the lightest of touches.

During a version of Body and Soul, Hitchcock's vibrato-laden wails elicited groans of ecstasy from some members of the audience, while Tracey laid out great glittering chords that seemed to linger for ever. Clarke came on with all the flash of a show drummer, matching Cleyndert's funky syncopations with telepathic speed. The second half brought a gospel-tinged version of Sonny Rollins's Playing in the Yard and the Ben Castle tune The New Stalker, featuring a suitably predatory blues riff and a series of clipped, menacing crescendos.

With his younger band mates beavering away around him, Tracey's contribution became even sparer. Crabbily plucking at the keyboard during Wayne Shorter's Deluge, he created a solo that was a study in space and silence. Devious melodic detours vied with skeletal dischords and sudden chromatic runs, most of which managed to end sarcastically on the wrong note. As sly a pianist as they come, Tracey is still far more a master of toe-curling suspense than he is of heart-warming release.