With few giants of the vigorous and pithily bluesy hard-bop style of the 1950s and 60s still active, the late-career resurgence of Charles Tolliver – a hard-bopper of real character who worked with drums legend Max Roach and saxist Jackie McLean – is big jazz news. The 72-year-old Florida-born trumpeter/composer, a lithe and youthful figure in a rakish bopper's beret, played one night at Ronnie Scott's with his Music Inc quintet, including young New York pianist Theo Hill, and former Herbie Hancock drummer Gene Jackson.

Shouldering a gig's entire horn-playing role alone is no pushover for a trumpeter at any age, and the sidemen's practice of opening solos stealthily and building them to a roar acquired a formulaic drift – so the gig inevitably lacked the punch of Tolliver's explosive big-band show at the 2007 London Jazz festival, but the canny twists of his themes are always strikingly his own. On brisk, flinty pieces such as Copasetic and Blues Soul, Tolliver fired off taut solos of buzzing trills and abrupt squeals (sometimes reminiscent of Miles Davis's staccato late-60s phrasing). And while he preferred the rhythm section's pressure over the unsupported spaciousness of slow tunes, his beautiful ballad themes overcame any insecurities. Hill coaxed percussive improvisations from quiet speculations, guitarist Bruce Edwards built solos of Wes Montgomery-like suppleness out of slow (sometimes very slow) preambles, and on Stanley Cowell's Effie – a riveting hybrid of trumpet yelps and subtle resolutions – the music cranked up to a seductive, 1970s-funk groove. A Latin swinger with a brightly ascending trumpet hook was a reminder of Tolliver's knack for uptempo tunes that sound like big-band riffs – and thereby a reminder that another orchestral showcase for the commanding repertoire of this long-underrated original would be very welcome. But it's good to have Charles Tolliver around in any guise he wants.

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