Feminist chic is rarely encountered at Ronnie Scott's, so Chicago's Guggenheim Award-winning singer-pianist Patricia Barber is a welcome sight.

An intellectual artist with a wide range of emotion, from hypersensitivity to meaty forcefulness, she resembles the head of an expensive girls' school. Severe, but with a hint of sensuality.

Crouched low over the keyboard, with eyes shut and mouth silently agape, she evokes memories of Bill Evans on good nights. And while no Evans, she proved an admirably cliché-free improviser, both as player and vocalist.

Opposite her, that fine New England tenorist Scott Hamilton was swinging the standards in his best Zoot Sims-meets-Ben Webster manner, but it was Barber's probing set that lodged in the memory.

With bass, drums and a remarkably empathetic guitarist, Neal Alger, she brought real freshness to standards (S'Wonderful, Witchcraft, Caravan) and a brooding vocal intensity to three original songs, The Moon, Hunger and Morpheus, from her latest album, Mythologies. These are based on the Metamorphoses of Ovid, a Roman poet's review of Greek mythology. Not a project you'd find Lily Allen doing. Truly, Ms Barber is an artist for the thinking fan.

• Until tomorrow (020 7439 0747).