The Rising Sun Arts Centre is like a hidden, battered gem, hidden just outside Reading's inner ring road and a short distance from where the Oracle shopping centre sits, a simpering, greedy teenager on the banks of the River Kennet. Whereas events in the Oasis are entirely predictable, evenings of music and performance in the Rising Sun are quite the opposite. As the room slowly filled up two Sundays ago, and the air started to warm, there cannot have been more than a handful in the audience who knew in advance what a treat was in store.

Saxophonist Steve Williamson (pictured) last got together with pianist Pat Thomas at the London Jazz Festival, where they surprised everyone with their intense and responsive interplay. On this occasion, in a more intimate venue, they dismembered a number of jazz standards, breathing new life into tunes that to some have all but outlived their sell-by-date.

Thomas began the first set with a what was quite recognisably Bye Bye Blackbird, despite thick, discordant harmonies throwing a partial veil over the original tune that was never fully extended. When Williamson came in, the melody re-emerged only to be overtaken again by a flight of phrases from sax while Thomas threw the rhythm into a new direction with the astonishingly rich and powerful figures he can lift out of nowhere with his left hand. So began an evening of remarkable free jazz from two players who have only recently discovered such powerful compatibility that they can state, dismember and partially rebuild a tune with nothing more than a nod of agreement and musical ingenuity.

Even hardened supporters of free improvisation will admit the music can move from peak to sudden trough, but on this occasion there was nothing but peaks, particularly in the second set. Williamson's treatment of Monk's Round Midnight was a fascinating, almost agonising, reworking in which neither player allowed the melody to resolve to the final chord, giving the impression that this was music that started somewhere else and will continue in another place. Let's hope that's the case. There is a monthly Sunday jazz gig in Reading to look out for.