Bad enough that Fabio Capello is teaching us how to play football, his Italian compatriot Renato D'Aiello is showing Londoners how the tenor sax should be played. In 1999 the neo-bopper swapped sunny Naples for a council flat in Bermondsey ("I like it," he explained, "there's drug-dealers and gangsters in the building. It's just like home") and began the lengthy process of establishing himself.

Jazz stars are not born overnight, and Renato further stacked the odds against himself by ignoring the all-pervasive influence of John Coltrane and concentrating on the lyricism of Dexter Gordon.

During Cole Porter's slow-medium standard, Everything I Love, the more muscular ethos of Sonny Rollins also flitted across the bandstand.

The Vortex, home of drastically experimental music, rarely features straight-ahead modern jazz and its habitués relished the experience as D'Aiello's all-Italian rhythm section, double-bassist Nicola Muresu and drummer Massimo Russino, laid down a passable groove.

Representing Britain with distinction were pianist Ross Stanley and the remarkable trombonist Mark Bassey.

A thalidomide casualty who operates his slide with a prosthetic forearm, Bassey is a stylish soloist who combined particularly well with D'Aiello's tenor on the Chet Baker orginal, Grade A Dream. His solos on a Jimmie Rowles ballad, The Peacocks, and Charles Mingus's New Orleans tribute, Jelly Roll, were the highlights of the evening.

D'Aiello's best moments came on The Eternal Triangle, a fast 32-bar theme immortalised on record by Rollins, Dizzy Gillespie and the marvellous Sonny Stitt. Anybody who keeps music of this quality alive must be doing something right.