Woody Herman Big Band, Ronnie Scott's, London

It's 15 years since Woody Herman replaced his last clarinet reed, dying, incredibly considering his fame over five decades, in poverty. The IRS had even seized his home and he had to lease it back from the government, which is a salutary lesson for anyone thinking of setting up a pioneering big band. The remaining "herd", as Herman's groups were known, is led by tenor saxophonist Frank Tiberi, picked by Woody himself to keep the ruminants rumbling, and features many of the hot young players who were with the great man in his latter years, such as the trombonist and arranger John Fedchock.

Perhaps some might expect an outfit such as this to rest on the laurels of the past, smoothly swinging their way through sepia-tinted numbers. While some of the numbers were from the early years, there was no post-bellum formality about them. The heart of the Herman band has always been "The Four Brothers", a saxophone section of three tenors and one baritone, most famously of Stan Getz, Al Cohn, Zoot Sims and Serge Chaloff.

Running through the tune named after the brothers, the current generation of siblings showed what made the Herman sound so distinctive: the sax section, made heavy through the lack of altos, gave a virtuoso display of four-part harmony, riding the bumps like one of those American limousines - the chassis low off the ground and the speed fast, but the passengers don't feel a jolt.

The weight of the saxes, anchored by a river-bottom scraping baritone and reinforced by a forceful bass trombone, was balanced by a five-strong trumpet section screaming out the staccato stops, commas and semi-colons. Speaking of which, hearing this band is like attending a masterclass on how to play tight-sphinctered swing. That, of course, is how Dizzy Gillespie explained his ability to play so high - "it's from the ass". As an exemplar of a big band, the Woody Herman orchestra can't be faulted: great arrangements, from Gillespie's Manteca, a gorgeous take on "Laura" with Fedchock's buffed trombone plunging into the cotton wool, to a successful version of Steely Dan's "Aja": good soloists in all sections: and even in the ballads the steel shows through the gloss, every intervention by the brass a "bap!" or a "whap!", the dynamics rising swiftly from mezzo-forte to fortissimo.

Enjoyable though a masterclass is, it's not the same as an authentic performance from the master. And Woody is gone. Tiberi is a good conductor and ensemble player, but he doesn't quite have the presence of a leader in the mould of Herman, Rich or Basie. See his band as a top-of-the-range tutor, the teacher rather than the real thing. It's still the Harvard of big band education.