Music: No blues. So what

DAVE BRUBECK QUARTET ROYAL FESTIVAL HALL

LONDON

THE LAST time Brubeck played London, his band wore evening suits. This time, they wore evening suits and a woman on my row produced opera glasses. At 77, Brubeck attracts and enjoys the trappings of the classical tradition in which he was apprenticed.

His first British tour was exactly 40 years ago. He was already jazz's latest big thing - an ex-student of Milhaud and Schoenberg who had taken the jazz scene by storm by bringing the music out of the late-night, big- city jazz club and onto the college campus. He played privately for presidents and popes and charmed generations of housewives who ordinarily would not have much time for modern jazz. Members of the audience from that 1958 visit have been invited to a special concert where they will meet Brubeck and chew the cud over old times - an image, I suspect, somewhat akin to Room 101 for anyone without a love of jazz.

His quartet this time included fine British bassist Alec Dankworth and drummer Randy Jones. But everyone was blown away by Bobby Militello, a stunning alto saxophonist and flautist and the kind of musician it is truly an honour to hear - steeped in the entire history of the music, a master of his instruments at any tempo, imaginative and inspired throughout every moment of the concert.

His sound was rooted in bebop, but one moment it came with a soft Lee Konitz lilt, the next a buzz of Sanborn-style static. His rapport with the leader was special, too. They dueted, Baroque-style, like two lines from a Goldberg Variation.

Wynton Marsalis likes to define jazz as "blues and swing". Dave Brubeck has done very well for almost 50 years without showing much interest in either. But he is fascinated by a wider definition of harmony and rhythm, using his classical education yet producing a music that trembles with the spontaneity that is jazz's distinguishing feature.

He sounded much more incisive and excited about his own playing in the second half (perhaps because the piano had been tuned during the interval) and it is surely a sign of this man's ingenuity that he can play a single anthem over and over and make it sound like the best performance imaginable every time.

He closed the second set with the inevitable "Take Five", but it sounded like magic, Militello producing an ethereal stream-of-consciousness, Brubeck darting around the keyboard with breathtaking resourcefulness. It took two encores before an emotional audience would go home.

Brubeck prepared for the next city. At 77, most of us would be happy if we could still tie our own shoelaces.