Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor Live

The alto saxophonist, 77, and the pianist, 78, are unequivocally still there for the music.

The refurbished Royal Festival Hall got its first taste of jazz courtesy of Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor, two vigorously surviving founding fathers of the explosive 1960s avant garde. Alto saxophonist Coleman is 77 now, and pianist Taylor 78, but neither man is any nearer to planning a show's precise course, let alone showcasing a "legacy". Taylor was exploring a first-time partnership with the sax virtuoso and composer Anthony Braxton, while Coleman (whose gait is slower, but whose sound still cuts through a room like a flame) played the following night with a typically idiosyncratic lineup - him, his son Denardo on drums and three bass players. Both shows brought standing ovations.

After a prologue of reciting his vivid sound-poetry and rattling shakers offstage, Taylor began in duo with his empathetic percussionist Tony Oxley. The famous rapid-fire chords and lightning-bolt treble clusters still surfaced in bursts, but as rejoinders to fluid, rippling, even tender treble melodies. Bassist William Parker then played an unaccompanied bowed solo that sounded like a choir of ghostly voices.
The rest of the evening had Taylor, Parker, Oxley and multi-saxist Anthony Braxton on a single, seamless, mostly improvised jam, full of dynamic contrasts and idiosyncratic, on-the-fly logic. Taylor scrambled inside the piano lid while Braxton played a single, quavering, circular-breathed note. Braxton played raucous, guttural alto-sax lines while the band unleashed a steady, rolling thunder. Close to the finish, Oxley launched a cymbal feel that was almost swing, while the others ascended to a collective typhoon ended by Taylor's peremptory, that's-it chords.

Coleman's gig was just as fast-moving, though with more references to a skewed jazz time, and to funk. Bassist Charnett Moffett provided a furious backdrop of fast jazzy walks and wailing electronics, while Tony Falanga contributed a classically articulated counter-melody. Falanga also quoted the Rite of Spring's opening passage, and Bach's first cello suite, just for Coleman's mercurial alto to pick up the themes and play with them. Several Coleman classics then followed, including the anthemic free-funk melody from Dancing in Your Head, and the Monkish blues Turnaround; there was also some exquisite slow ballad playing, and an infectiously rocking groover close to the end.

Taylor and Coleman are unequivocally still there for the music, however it turns out. The audiences sensed they were present as jazz history was being celebrated - but still being made, too.

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