"The duo is improvised. We don't know what we're going to do, and when we've done it, we don't know what we've done."

British jazz piano great, Stan Tracey, makes a modest introduction to an incendiary opening set in which he and son, drummer Clark Tracey, display an astonishing musical telepathy.

This is modern jazz as the soundtrack to cool. Breathtaking technique and unfathomable time signatures combine to create a sophisticated and compelling sound that calls to mind the New York of Woody Allen and James Baldwin.

Much of Stan's work in this opening set is built around blues-tinged staccato chords that leave space for Clark's out-of-sight drumming.

He works a small kit of kick, snare, hat, and two toms with sticks, mallets, brushes, and, for one dizzying display, his hands, tapping out rhythms with his finger tips and creating whale-like noises by rubbing the drum skins with his palms.

The mood of these improvised numbers changes almost bar by bar, by turns elegiac, funky, sassy, and intriguing, and, on the fifth number, truly avant-garde.

On the fourth piece, Stan begins with a slow, wistful melody that changes almost immediately into a high-stepping staccato, while Clark opens the fifth number by beating out an impossibly sassy rhythm on a closed high hat.

The duo becomes the Stan Tracey Trio in the second set with the arrival of Andrew Cleyndert on upright bass, another virtuoso musician whose contribution extends to a series of solos that punctuate most of the later numbers.