Review: Instant Composers Pool Orchestra may be an unwieldy name but it's simpler than listing the ingredients that go into a performance by this extraordinary ensemble from Amsterdam.

Star rating: ****

Instant Composers Pool Orchestra may be an unwieldy name but it's simpler than listing the ingredients that go into a performance by this extraordinary ensemble from Amsterdam.

The concert was barely 10 minutes old when we'd already had a coruscating horns and reeds chorale, a slightly fraught trombone and piano interlude, a string section easing from the bitingly manic to the gorgeously mournful, and founders, drummer Han Bennink and pianist Misha Mengelberg, evoking the spirit and idiosyncratic rhythmic- harmonic approach of Thelonious Monk.

You leave your expectations at home when this troupe come to town and while Bennink's antics - including "dampening" the snare drum with his foot and turning a drumstick and his teeth into a swannee whistle - are familiar from previous visits, they're only part of the fun that goes hand in hand with arrangements of striking beauty and displays of spectacular musicianship.

Monk and his fellow jazz iconoclast Herbie Nichols feature prominently, including a treatment of the latter's Twelve Bars that might almost have come from a 1930s dance band. There are shades of Charles Mingus and Philip Glass, too, as well as fairground melodies and demented marching bands. The key word is "instant" as all the music, be it lovingly interpreted, ripped from the page or conjured on the spot like trumpeter Thomas Heberer's unutterably graceful glissando-ing feature, carried a feeling of spontaneity that suggested they might do it all again but never the same way.