As a young tyro with a big sound and an explosive technique Courtney Pine would take centre stage and stay there. Now as a matured musician with an OBE he has taken on the role of wise father to another generation of young black musicians. His new Jazz Warriors, with an album to mark the Bicentenary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade, bristles with energy and young talent.

Now, shunning the limelight, the band leader and composer spent most of the evening in the back row encouraging and controlling while everyone took a turn in the solo spot.

This is a big band with a sound that rippled with controlled majesty from the first bar. Yet the arrangements were deceptively simple, leaving the soloists to take up the space and fly. And there was a lot of flying.

The revelation of this band was that each member is able to express his own musical ideas rather than suffer the constraints of the band. It is unfair not to mention every player but constraints of space prevail. Shabaka Hutchings, on clarinet, brought in the magic lilt of township music; Mark Crown played a stunning tribute piece to Freddie Hubbard; Samuel Dubois produced unexpected harmonies and extraordinary expression on steel pan.

The older members of the band also had their opportunities. Cuban violinist Omar Puente dug deep into a world of music, mixing West Indian with baroque, while Darren Taylor, on bass, played an inspiring bowed solo. Pine himself took centre stage on bass clarinet, surprisingly using the harmonies of the Middle East to mould a solo that showed his enviable mastery of this tricky instrument.

Pine is also a great communicator and showman who brought the enthusiasm of each player forward. Yet the last song, by Ayanna Witter-Johnson, was a stark and fitting reminder of the slave trade under which so many suffered.