Whenever the innovative jazz and contemporary-classical music of recent times gets weighed up, the name of Keith Tippett doesn't surface as often as it should. Yet for his prepared-piano experiments, early advances in jazz-rock fusion, compositions for chamber ensembles, adventures for huge orchestras and more, the Bristol-born pianist and composer is a key figure in European art music. His diverse interests were showcased on a three-night residency at the Vortex – featuring his vocalist/poet wife, Julie Tippetts, a jazz octet, and the classical Elysian String Quartet.

Jazz was the dominant agenda of Friday's show – through a piano trio with gifted young bassist Tom McCredie and Tippett's fine long-time drummer Peter Fairclough, and a fluent octet premiering a new suite (The Nine Dances of Patrick O'Gonogon) inspired by Irish folk music. The trio offered a mesmerising lesson in how to free jazz-making of orthodox melody while never letting the audience off anticipation's hook – through high-register freebop piano runs as seamless as whistling, to organ-like low drones, systems-like loops against train-rhythm percussion, or folk melodies in which objects on the piano strings seemed to turn the instrument into a hammered dulcimer. Tippett's inspired take on the jazz tradition shaped the second half, with the searing alto saxes of James Gardner-Bateman and Sam Mayne, and the lithe and clean-toned sound of superb trumpeter Fulvio Sigurta often rising over softly exhaled, Duke Ellington-like harmonies. Squally, fast-weaving jazz melodies like The Dance of the Return of the Swallows turned to folk dances, supple trombone duets and uptempo sprints in which Tippett's prodding and cajoling of his soloists from the piano was simply breathtaking. He was generous in praise of his band of mostly recent graduates at the close, and they served this modest musical powerhouse very well.

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