It's good to hear an American jazz vocalist in his prime. Most recent London visitors have been either raw beginners, such as nervous little Norah Jones, or octogenarian Broadway babes, a permanent Pizza on the Park speciality.

Kurt Elling, by contrast, proudly tops male-vocal polls right now, and rightly so. The suave Chicagoan has taste, talent and the kind of warm, mellifluous voice that could well have made him a successful middle-ofthe-road crooner. Fortunately, he was bitten by the jazz bug first, one of several cultural advantages he enjoys.

Indeed, a typical hour with Elling comes across like a university seminar in modern literature. Which other US singer would expand a love song with his own selection of verses by the Austro-Czech poet Rainer Maria Rilke? Or recite comic Richard "Lord" Buckley's beat version of Shakespeare's funeral oration from Julius Caesar ("Hipsters, flipsters, knock me your lobes...") in full?

His opening set contained all this, plus a Jon Hendricks lyric to a John Coltrane solo from A Love Supreme, and superb jazz balladry on classics such as Easy Living and My Foolish Heart, his tone modulating from grainy to smooth during the course of one rich note. Whatever the mood, his support team of pianist-arranger Laurence Hobgood, bassist Rob Amster and drummer Frank Parker Jr was first class.

Audience reaction suggested that Elling was hitting most of his targets, from tender maidens to crusty East-End cabbies, starved of post-Sinatra pizzazz. "Go on, my son," urged the latter. The former just sighed.