The similarities and differences between Gwilym Simcock - the young British jazz piano star of the moment - and John Taylor, one of Simcock's gurus, were sharpened by hearing the two of them occupy the same piano stool in the same venue with the same drummer inside a month.

Simcock, who appeared here with a quintet including drummer Martin France, showed how much Tayloresque harmonic sophistication and subtle dovetailing of musical traditions he's been able to coax to maturity while still in his 20s. Though his music is jazzier than Taylor's, he shares with the elder statesman a personal lyricism that isn't undermined by hiding the clues as to what's going to happen next.

The Jarrett effect was sporadically apparent in the group's opener, with its lazily wriggling soprano sax melody (delivered by the immaculate Stan Sulzmann) curling over a catchy piano vamp before turning into Martin France's quiet funk groove. John Parricelli, a guitarist who seems to blend into any band he plays with yet still impose his personality on it, played the first of a succession of fleet and silvery solos, and he and long-time partner France sounded hand-in-glove throughout, with young bassist Tom Mason quickly tuning into the relationship.

Simcock sketched an impressionistic intro to the follow-up against spacey shimmers from the guitar and bass, but Parricelli and Sulzmann (now on tenor sax) accelerated it into hustling free-funk. Simcock leafed through his Bill Evans ballad credentials to make the softest piano sound hum, and France animated both moods of the mixed-tempo piece that closed the set, with unexpectedly Gershwinesque harmonies winding it up. As a pianist alone, Gwilym Simcock would have deserved all the hype, but this performance confirms that he doesn't see his composer's identity as his second string.