McCoy Tyner & Bobby Hutcherson/Charles Lloyd Quartet, Barbican Hall, London

Musical variety with not enough vibe

So long as no egos were bruised over the order of billing, there will have been plenty of camaraderie backstage before and after this concert. Tyner, Hutcherson, Lloyd and his drummer Billy Hart are all of the generation that came to prominence in the Sixties, while the Tyner-Hutcherson group's more youthful bassist Charnett Moffett has probably plucked his strings while supporting Lloyd's man Robert Hurst on occasion.

But that's not to say the two halves of this concert were alike – complementary, yes, but very different. Lloyd's group, also featuring John Abercrombie on guitar, came on stage first in a low-key manner they continued musically. From Hurst's extended intro, this quartet developed as organically as the weather. Lloyd, in beret and dark glasses, swayed up and down so much that they'd placed two mics in front of his tenor sax.

His tone was almost hollow, floating in and around his instrument, a ripple of notes surrounding the melody replacing a simple statement of the theme. Contrasting but blending perfectly with Lloyd's free-ish explorations was Abercrombie's thin-lined bluesy guitar, while Hart shifted rhythms on a light-ended kit, containing four ride cymbals and a tiny bass drum. The balance was crystal clear, allowing the shapes they created to drift into each other like clouds, which went on to coalesce; and then the sky became clear again under a new configuration.

The balance was not so good in the second half, and poor Bobby Hutcherson suffered the most. The vibraphone has a proper place in jazz – think of Milt Jackson or the uncompromising Mike Mainieri – but perhaps because of its close relationship to the xylophone not everyone takes it terribly seriously. Hutcherson's vibes were underamplified for the whole set, and when you're playing with as loud and percussive a pianist as McCoy Tyner that's a big problem. You had to strain to hear him, a fact of which he must have been conscious.

It didn't help that his vibes had flashing lights on the front, or that his mallets were thin bendy affairs with pink heads. No matter how much Hutcherson strutted, I couldn't help thinking of the camp ballroom dancing teacher from Hi-De-Hi, especially when he puckered his lips in a manner more Attitude than attitude.

But what can you do when Tyner is on stage? He tried to keep quiet when Hutcherson soloed, but every time he built up a wave on the piano little Bobby was swept out to sea.

Tyner himself was impressive as always, and in good humour. His playing has mellowed from the urgency he used to display in Coltrane's electrifying Sixties quartet, and I couldn't help missing that. Still, no one slams his left hand down on a keyboard like he does, although the piano-tuners might not appreciate it so much.

The real star of the second set was Charnett Moffett. If it takes a certain confidence to wear a gold suit on stage, he sure has it. He and his double bass could have been grooving to Sly and The Family Stone the way they moved together. Moffett then wowed the audience by hitting the strings with the wood of his bow, creating harmonics as well as sounding the fingered notes, bowing his bass with a distortion pedal on, slapping the strings and tickling them under the bridge.

When the band left the stage, Moffett was greeted with pop star cheers. It wasn't quite the point, but it was fun.