A piano player who splices Fats Waller's Honeysuckle Rose, Ellington's It Don't Mean a Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing, free-improv and Mahler's Symphony No 1 isn't such a rarity in the postmodern era. But, even today, few pianists carry it off with the aplomb, technical command, referential depth and humour as Uri Caine.

The classically trained Caine has had mixed reactions to a few of his big jazz/classical crossover ventures. But as a full-on jazz pianist, he's one of the best in the world. The American rubbed that point home over a two-night unaccompanied stopover at north London's Vortex.

Caine launched into Honeysuckle Rose as a stream of headlong runs over a stride left-hand, with chattering dissonances, stamping chords and sly twists of the tune. The third movement of Mahler's symphony brought more of a Keith Jarrett-like reflectiveness. And Bushwhack, an original, began as a hailstorm of spiky improv building to a wall-of-noise roar before it found its way to It Don't Mean a Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing.

Monk's Round Midnight had a busily restless intensity. Top Hat, White Tie and Tails combined Caine's appetite for percussive repeated notes and arrhythmic chord patterns with a sustained driving pulse that Oscar Peterson would have been happy with. All the Way started rhapsodic and ended up in free-improvisational ripples.

Just occasionally, Caine's show felt like more of a phenomenon than an emotional experience, but tour de force doesn't get near to describing it.