Review: Not so much a game of two halves, this was a concert of four quarters, with the opening one indicating a group still getting to know each other and the music.

Locatio: Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow
Star rating: ***

Not so much a game of two halves, this was a concert of four quarters, with the opening one indicating a group still getting to know each other and the music. Then, as guitarist John Abercrombie's Spring Song unfolded, you could almost feel the lines of communication tightening.

By the time Julian Arguelles's tribute to favourite saxophonist Dewey Redman led up to the interval, Arguelles wasn't just lending his name to a trio with an invited guest, he was fronting a band, and a band that is three parts American to one part adopted Scot.

Arguelles's Birmingham secondary school and his relocation to East Lothian were celebrated in tune titles but it was the saxophonist's love of Redman and Ornette Coleman and his half-Spanish background that registered most strongly on this first stop of a Scottish Arts Council Tune-up tour.

Coleman's Round Trip fitted the group to a T, with Arguelles and Abercrombie's coiling tenor and guitar caressing its angular shape and bassist Michael Formanek contributing a beefy solo. Special mention must go, though, to drummer Tom Rainey, whose precise playing lent a brisk brightness and whose imaginative, almost balletic presence behind Abercrombie and Arguelles's considered improvisations was brilliantly effective. Rainey's crisp but subtle punch allied to Arguelles's hypnotic tenor figure and a classic solo from Abercrombie on the concert's Spanish coda strengthened the conviction that catching one of the tour's later dates could be quite a treat.