Steve Swell Quartet
The Vortex, London

IF FREE, improvising trombonism is the sonics of outrageous breath, the shivering slide work of Steve Swell that opens his quartet's gig at the Vortex is its epitome.

With the open-spirited US hornman are three powerful British musicians. The artist on drums is Mark Sanders, the arch-bassist John Edwards and pianist the protean Liam Noble. Free musical spirits indeed.

Edwards saws at his bass with the phenomenal energy of a jazz lumberjack and plucks his strings with a powerful resonance next to the endless inventive subtlety of Sanders's percussion, his sticks, brushes and mallets caressing and striking all the surfaces of his drum set and other nearby objects.